MnAstro Forums

Is this on anyone's radar?

Comet (C/2022 E3) ZTF. Closest approach to earth Feb 1st at .283 au (26,000,000 mi)
According to "Wiki", the comet is expected to get brighter than magnitude 6 and thus become visible with the naked eye from a dark sky site... but more likely you'll still need binoculars.

Circumpolar from now until Feb 5th.


Merle
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I think several including me are watching the weather to see when we can get a view. Locally it looks cloudy at least for the next 5 days.
https://weatherstreet.com/states/u-s-cl ... recast.htm

https://youtu.be/DilnEio971o shared on CN.

Just waiting for a break in the clouds :-/

Sadly, the moon will be big and bright in early Feb.

I still haven't seen this comet. It's just been too cloudy or too cold. And now the Moon is starting to come back around.

Suresh

Tim Russ, the actor who played Tuvok on Star Trek Voyager just imaged C/2022 E3 ZTF a few days ago. He speaks briefly about it on the YouTube show "The Shuttlepod Show", episode 2.09 "Russ Hour" starting at 1:10:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3gl-jqF1jY

I took these from my house in Woodbury around 9:30 pm last night. They're horrible quality - just my phone held up to the telescope's eyepiece, but it's the best I could do on short notice and in absolutely freezing temperatures. I'm still glad I got to see it.

The first picture is with a 25 mm lens, second one with a Barlow.

I’m impressed that a phone could pick it up! (Note to self - get new phone)

Saw it with an AT72 refractor around 8pm in St. Paul last night. Not much to see. Couldn't se it with binoculars. Took an untracked 5 second exposure with an old DSLR and didn't get the green color I expected.

We've been watching here from Jackson over this last week. People are coming in with some grossly exaggerated expectations! (Thanks, Social Media!!)

Through our scope, it looks more like this.

Ron, how did you get such a clear shot? Was this with a camera mounted to the scope?

Telescope mounted CCD camera.

And this? This ain't helping.

That actually looks a lot like the one Mark Job took that we saw at the meeting last night

This is image Dean is referring to from the meeting last night.
This comet is nowhere near the brightness social media has made it out to be. As a novice visual observer such as myself, I have problems finding this comet in my backyard.

This image was captured from Texas remotely with my rig in the wee hours of January 23 using a monochrome camera and RGB filters. Processed in PixInsight. There is about 45 minutes of total exposure time.

Enjoy!

That is awesome Mark!
The other thing that the media keeps emphasizing is that it’s a “green comet”, like that’s so uncommon. And of course the “your only chance for 50,000 years” junk.

Oh, come on!

[head slap emoji]

See? Now you're just asking to get punched.
.

Hasn't Comet always been green?

Got a chance to look again last night. Even with a streetlight shining in my face, I was able to see it before moonrise in my 12" dob. I could just make out one of the tails extending east-northeast with averted vision. I wasn't able to see any elongation back on Jan. 26.

Just for fun, I tried my Astronomik UHD to see if I could take advantage of the "green." Obviously it's designed for OIII/Hb and not carbon, but the wavelengths are in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, not much to report. I could still see the comet, but it was too dim overall and didn't improve the contrast much. Might have been interesting to try in darker skies with fully adapted eyes.

Updated finder chart for the next couple weeks of viewing, before the moon becomes an issue again.

Merle
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Captured this a couple of days ago (mono camera, 13 mins of total exposure):