[BAA Comets] Small outburst of Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann

[Alison Tripp]

Hi Richard,

Thank you for the follow up information you sent.  I have passed the
information onto the 3 schools that took images yesterday 16th April.

Unfortunately we are running a ToD today so we will not be able to take any
images but if you still need images for the rest of the week let me have
some co ordinates and I will forward them to our users.

Kindest regards
Alison


On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Richard Miles
<rmiles.btee at btinternet.com>wrote:

> It appears that this comet has outburst around April 14. Thanks to imaghes
> taken by 3 schools/colleges working with the Faulkes Telescope team, we
> have some images taken earlier today which I have processed and analysed.
>
> The mages of 29P taken with the Faulkes Telescopes North and South on
> April 12 and April 16 can be found at:
> http://britastro.org/~rmiles/**Images/29P_2013Apr12-16_**labelA.jpg<http://britastro.org/~rmiles/Images/29P_2013Apr12-16_labelA.jpg>
>
> There appears to be a condensation in the coma about 2.0" from the
> pseudonucleus as shown when a rotational gradient filter of 20 degrees
> (courtesy of IRIS software) is applied.
> N.B. This is quite a weak outburst compared to what we witnessed back in
> 2010 for example.
>
> It is interesting to compare the April 16.53 Faulkes R-filter image with
> that obtained by Jean-Francois Soulier about April 16.01. See:
> http://6888comete.free.fr/fr/**image29Pschwassmannwachmannfra**nce.htm<http://6888comete.free.fr/fr/image29Pschwassmannwachmannfrance.htm>
>
> His image is unfiltered and shows a much more spherical (larger?) shell. I
> suspect that there may be emission in the blue and green due to expanding
> gas which contributes to the unfiltered image but which does not show up in
> the R-filter image
>
> Rolando Ligustri's image of April 16.42 taken also with an R filter is
> much more similar in appearance to the Faulkes image. See:
> https://plus.google.com/**photos/107386404051271210368/**
> albums/5452252571099371489/**5867506591815737218?banner=pwa<https://plus.google.com/photos/107386404051271210368/albums/5452252571099371489/5867506591815737218?banner=pwa>
>
> We know that CO is released when 29P outbursts and this gas may be
> fluorescing and so is detectable visually or with an unfiltered CCD but not
> an R-filtered image!
>
> Richard Miles
> BAA
>



-- 
Alison Tripp
Faulkes Telescope Project Administrator
University of Glamorgan