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(meteorobs) Hale/Bopp Observ Feb 17 ZAYGE
Last night when I went to bed, the sky was full of clouds. the weather
forecast indicated the same for today with chance of rain. When I got up this
morning at 02:30 to visit the tinkle room, I just happened to glance out the
window and noticed the moon and then stars...the sky was completely clear. I
shortly afterwards made the decision to go to the observatory and try to take
some photographs of the comet before going to work. So...I loaded my cameras
and packed what I need into the truck.
When I got to my Descanso observing site, the skies were still completely
clear...and no wind at all. High winds were also in the forcast for the
mountains. Anyhow, I got all set up and was ready when Hale/bopp cleared the
mountains at around 4:40 am. This time I used my 10"SCT to photograph with
and used the 4" as a guide scope. I was concentrating on the coma area. I
took black and white and then color. Made a variety of exposures from 15
seconds up to 5 minutes.
Then I had a few minutes to just observe since I didn't have enough time to
switch back to the 4 inch to make an all comet shot with color film. Thru my
14X100's and the 10 inch, It seems to me that the southerly jet that I've
been reporting has slightly rotated in a clockwise direction...maybe an
illusion? Also I've noticed that the coma seems to have condensed. The tail
seems to form almost immediately leaving a smaller coma to give off light .
This might be part of the reason that I'm still seeing a magnitude of about
1.5 or 1.6 for the past week? The tail is easily seen with the naked eye...I
was under 6.0 skies by the way. Thru the 14X100's the dust tail was about 2.5
degrees and an ion tail can be seen up to about 6 degrees. The dust tail also
seems to be just slightly off set towards the south in compared to the ion
tail.
George Zay