C/2006A1 (Pojmanski) on Mar 5, 2006
The comet finally cleared a cloud bank about 5:25 am and I was able to get about 10 minutes of video. Faint wisps of the tail can be seen extending approximately 21 arc-minutes to the west. Coma appears to be ~ 5.7 arc-min across. Image below created from a stack of 60, two second exposures, taken in a period of about 4 minutes. Sky was mostly clear (except where the comet was of course), temperature 33 deg F, occasional wind gusts to 5 mph, turbulence fair (5/10), and transparency was generally very good (occasional thin clouds drifted through). Equipment used was Celestron Nexstar11, F3.3 focal reducer, and Stellacam2 video camera.
March 6th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
[…] Vern of Vern’s Astronomy Weblog captured a pretty cool photo of Pojmanski on March 5, 2006. Swing by and have a look. […]
March 9th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Nice Job!
March 14th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Great image. You can really see the tail. Do you think the elliptical shape of the comet head is a result of the time-exposure?
March 14th, 2006 at 11:32 am
The filaments in the tail show up fairly well so I don’t think it is tracking error during the exposure. It maybe distortion from the F3.3 reducer or more likely an aspect ratio problem. The dimensions of the pixels in the Stellacam2 aren’t equal in size. I have been scaling the 640×480 images to 640×432 to correct, but that may not be the correct ratio. I’ve been intending to look up the pixels size, thanks for reminding me!