Tuesday morning’s clear skies (02.03.09) offered me possibly the last chance to observe Lulin as it begins it’s long journey back towards the outer solar system and beyond. I didn’t expect to see too much detail as the comet is now fading, but I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to grab one last sketch of our cosmic visitor.
Lulin materialized as a spherical milky smudge against the jet sky, but I could not discern even the vaguest hint of the anti tail as I had done during my previous studies of the comet. The nucleus appeared dimmer and much fainter while the coma manifested itself as a hazy impression. Further opportunities to follow Lulin are now curbed by Moonlight up until around the middle of this month by which time the comet will have travelled into the constellation of Gemini and faded to 7th or 8th magnitude. From here up till the end of May Lulin will dwell in and around the stars Mebsuta, Tejat and Nu (ν) Geminorum, eventually disappearing in the glow of the setting Sun.
Of the three sketches that I have been lucky enough to make of Lulin, this one was certainly the hardest; I had to really work to accurately reproduce this observation. Initially I tried using a graphite palette and blending stumps to create the comet as I have done before, but I ran into problems creating the subtleties of the comet. Finally as a compromise, and unlike my last two sketches, I decided to use Photoshop to generate Lulin alongside the hand drawn star field. This way I could control the softness of the comet while keeping the definition of the stars.
It will be over a millennium before Lulin returns to the inner solar system, if indeed it ever does return, so I’m glad I’ve had this chance to observe and sketch this brief but amazing visitor to our skies.
Edit 14.09.09: After six months of procrastination I’ve finally made the effort to rework this sketch of comet Lulin. I’m now happy to present it here as a complete and consistent piece of work. I hope that you enjoy it.
Tags: C/2007 N3 Lulin, Gemini, Mebsuta, Strathspey 25x100, Tejat
Posted in Astro Art, Observing | 2 Comments »
The last few weeks have been tough: 144P/Kushida has been virtually non-existent and my deep sky observing has just gone straight out of the window. However, much to my relief Thursday night offered a clear spell, albeit a short one. The sky transparency wasn’t all that great, but I certainly wasn’t complaining - you take what you can get under these kind of circumstances.
I decided that I wasn’t going to squander any of my precious time chasing after Kushida when I could be catching up with my deep sky observing. My targets for the night were Messier 35, an open cluster in Gemini and Messier 103 and Messier 52, both open clusters in Cassiopeia. I set up the tripod from about 22:40 UT and was just finishing mounting my Bresser 10×50s when a cloud layer rolled in over the western horizon and quickly obscured the sky. To add to that, it also began to rain so I had to pack up and head indoors to wait and hope for the skies to clear.
Somebody up there was listening because within half an hour the clouds had drifted away leaving behind them a reasonably clear sky. I headed back out at around 23:20 UT, this time just with the 10×50s hand held and immediately trained them on Gemini. By using the stars Tejat and Propus as a guide, M35 wasn’t at all hard to find and instantly jumped out at me from the 7° FOV. At a magnitude of 5.3 M35 is a fairly bright DSO and under suitable sky conditions the open cluster can even be made out with the naked eye. Through my bins the cluster offered a wonderful view with some subtle granularity, but that could possibly have been down to the atmospheric conditions. After spending some time studying M35 I moved on to Cassiopeia, but not before stopping to take in some of the sights in Auriga. Namely M36, M37 and M38 which for me are just some of the finest distant open clusters observable in the night sky. If you’ve not looked at these three open clusters before, do so - you won’t be disappointed.
Finding M103 in Cassiopiea was no hard task as the open cluster sits quite close to the star Ruchbah, but at magnitude 7.4 M103 is not as vivid as M35 in Gemini and is not quite as dense. I’d have to agree with Harlow Shapely who classified M103 as a loose and poor cluster, but while M103 lacks the pizazz of M35 it still makes for a noteworthy observation. Messier 52 on the other hand proved to be a harder nut to crack as it remained elusive to me no matter how many times I swept out from the star Caph towards the constellation Cepheus. Visibility really wasn’t tack sharp and some thin fractocumulus clouds were impeding my view so my lack of success was probably down to that.
As the conditions steadily declined I decided to wrap things up and return to M52 at some future point when the weather proved to be far more agreeable. I’d also like to return to M35 and M103 with the 25×100s but that’s for another time. For the moment I’m happy I was able to get out and score two DSOs off the list and take in some satisfying observations.
Tags: 144P/Kushida, Auriga, Bresser 10x50, Caph, Cassiopiea, Cepheus, Gemini, Harlow Shapely, M103, M35, M36, M37, M38, M52, Propus, Ruchbah, Tejat, Weather
Posted in Observing | No Comments »
