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(meteorobs) Re: Hale/bopp ion tail missing
Hello John,
Thanks for the note about Hale/Bopps ion tail...yes I did see your posting on
aol's bulletin board. To update you here... I made two photographs of
Hale/bopp On the evening of March 25th....one in black in white (tmax-400)
and one in color (Fuji color 800). Both were 15 minutes long and under very
dark skies from my observatory in Descanso. In both instances, I used my
200mm f/3.5 lens. Upon arriving home that night, I developed the black and
white...mainly because I was curious about what the ion tail looked
like..dot since I wasn't able to pick it out that night visually. Because
viewing time was a very short and my priority was for photographs, I didn't
really get a good visual look. After developing the black and white, I
noticed no ion tail. The next morning, I took another look under a very
bright light and can just barely notice a faint ion tail...about several
times fainter than what I have in the past for the same exposure. When it was
low in the morning sky, I had no problems viewing or photographing the ion
tail. This afternoon, I just had my color film processed. The ion tail is
just barely there....both on the negative and print...no where near the
saturation I got on previous occasions. Also on the dust tail I can see a
slight arc now....pointing downwards from my location in a northerly
direction.
George Zay