July 24, 2024: Finally bagged comet 13P/Olbers

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

After a couple of abortive attempts (clouds rushing in, looking in the wrong spot, finally turning to the right spot, just for clouds to rush in), I managed to spot the comet with my Celestron C8. The previous attempts had all been with binoculars (Zeiss Victory 10x42, Helios LightQuest 16x80), but to no avail. This evening started clear, then some clouds came in, then it cleared again, but with some clouds threatening on the horizon, I drove to Aduarderzijl, where there is a good northern horizon, and city lights don't add to the perpetual twilight of these summer nights. When I arrived at about 22:50, it was still a bit too light, but I did have a go with binoculars. When that didn't work, I set up the Vixen Great Polaris mount, did a quick polar align, attached the C8 OTA, inserted the star diagonal and Nagler 31mm T5, aligned the 9x50 RACI finder, and star-hopped to the location in Leo Minor given by the maps from https://cometchasing.skyhound.com/ . After a short search near 38 LMi, I suddenly  spotted a very distinct fuzzy blob on the righthand side of the FOV. I centred it, and it showed up as a bright blob, very comet-like. I checked the star atlas, and there is a galaxy near 38 LMi but that should show up to the left and below in my star diagonal view. Besides, it is magnitude 12 or so, and this fuzzy was definitely closer to the magnitude 7 listed for 13P/Olbers.

Just out of curiosity, I tried the binoculars, and could just spot the comet in the Helios LightQuest 16x80s, but not in the Zeiss 10x42s.

Very happy at bagging comet number 39.

[Nik271]

Thank you for alerting me to this comet! I managed to see it last nigth (25 July) at 11pm just at the start ot nautical darkness. I was using my 100mm refractor at x40. It took me some trial and error star hopping to get to the right spot. Luckliy the comet was very close to the 7-th magnitude star HD93521 so once I was in the neghbourhood it was immediately obvious pretending to be  a globular cluster. It is going to fade rapidly from now on. I'm glad I managed to see it this time!