[BAA Comets] 46P now 6th magnitude

[Owen Brazell]

I went out tonight in between the showers and in hazy skies to a local dark site and to my surprise found it was pretty easy in 11x70 binoculars as a large haze. It was difficult to determine any shape due to trying to hold binos steady in a cold brisk wind.

Owen

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Nick James
Sent: 28 November 2018 17:59
To: BAA Comets discussion list
Subject: [BAA Comets] 46P now 6th magnitude

Hi all,

Denis Buczynski has been imaging this comet from 58 deg north latitude 
so it is definitely observable from the UK when the weather co-operates. 
A chart showing the comet's track through December is here:

https://www.britastro.org/node/16287

The attached is a single 180s Green filter exposure of 46P taken with 
iTelescope T14 in New Mexico. This is a Tak 106mm FSQ with a 4x2.5 
degree FoV. The image was reduced using comphot against UCAC-4 V mags. I 
get a total magnitude of 6.1 with a coma diameter of 37 arcmin. This is 
similar to the visual mags on COBS and with the result that David Swan 
reported using iTel T9 and the same analysis tool a few days ago:

https://www.britastro.org/node/16500

I think this shows that comphot can give results that are consistent 
with visual if you use the right instrument. I have imaging booked on 
T14 every few days now up until mid December and so this will be an 
interesting test of how well we can determine magnitudes of such a 
diffuse object.

Please try to observe this object through December and consider using 
comphot to analyze your images. You can download it from here:

https://www.britastro.org/node/11124

Nick.

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