Viewing 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova

[NGC7000]

Thanks for the update, Mike. Were you in the Leo Triplet region or over by the Virgo Cluster area ( M84 on up), or M95 area? I'm asking because I don't know of any other heavily galaxied areas and would like to know if there are any.

Tom

[Pete]

10.4 magnitude 45P Honda was supposedly sitting almost atop a bright galaxy when I tried for it from 21:30 - 21:40 last night. But there was no sign of the comet in my camera's relatively tight 21' X 15' FOV.

By way of contrast, P/Lovas (93P) was pretty nice at 14.6 magnitude and I'll be including a neat GIF to the upcoming observing report.

Pete

[Apollo XX]

Thanks for the update, Mike. Were you in the Leo Triplet region or over by the Virgo Cluster area ( M84 on up), or M95 area? I'm asking because I don't know of any other heavily galaxied areas and would like to know if there are any.

Tom

Hi Tom,

None of those, really. The areas you speak of are dense with the larger, more galaxy like galaxies. Last night the comet was in Coma and it's moving into UMa tonight for a four night stay, then it's off to Leo. The area where 45P is right now has a bunch of little NGC galaxies that may be small and dim but have enough surface brightness to look remarkably like a comet. Click this link for a view of the area; https://theskylive.com/planetarium?obj=45p

Also, here's the field from last night. It was real easy to run over a galaxy in my travels;

[NGC7000]

Thank you, Mike. I am going to give this a shot next available opportunity.

Tom

[Apollo XX]

Well, I can finally say that I've definitively seen comet 45P-Honda. And I can also say that it was one of the most difficult observations I've made. As I had said in my last post in this thread, I needed to go back and see if what I saw on Monday evening had moved away. I did that last night, and I have to admit that I wasn't totally surprised that the three fuzzies I saw on Monday were right where I left them - nothing had changed, meaning no comet was seen. At the time I thought I should have been able to see movement and I had a few excuses for not seeing it, so yeah, they were all galaxies. Back to the drawing board.

Starting the search anew, again, I consulted my charts and began scouring the area. Once again, nothing. Try as I may there was nothing coming up as I panned a wider and wider search area from the designated points on the charts. At one point I suspected something, but it was so dim and diffuse that I let it go.

Eventually my son came home, and hearing the hair dryer that I was using to keep the dew at bay he came out to where I was set up and we went on a nice tour of some of the more showy objects in the sky. The sky was pretty good, and we probably spent the better part of an hour bopping around from object to object. The cold was starting to set in, so he headed for the house and I decided to take one more try at the comet.

And then I saw it. It was actually nearly dead-on position from the chart I had downloaded from Bob King's article on the Sky and Tel website. This thing is so dim and so diffuse that it took everything I had to discern it in the eyepiece of a 12.5" telescope. There was no head, just a big ol' coma, and averted vision didn't help even one bit. The coma was quite large though, and fortunately for this observation it was nestled right smack in the middle of a triangle of mag 12-13 stars. I knew that if I was in fact on it that I would see movement in a reasonable amount of time, so I set down to wait and drank a beer in the dark to my success.

Going back to the scope about 30 minutes later, I moved back to the area where I had seen the comet but struggled to get a handle on the starfield. At this point I had been going to the area so much over the past few days that I had the finder movements down tight. The patterns were very distinct and I knew exactly where I should be, but when I looked in the eyepiece something wasn't making sense. I should probably take better notes. It would help in cases like this. Eventually I found my way and sure enough, the fuzz-patch had moved out of the triangle! Success! 45P was mine, finally.

I was working with two charts, one from S&T and one from Stellarium. The one from S&T was dead-on;

[Pete]

Yeah, Mike. Learned last night that different sites have different data - even within the Astronomical Union's data sets. Still looking into it. Congratulations on having the perseverance to catch 45P after so many tries.

Pete

[NGC7000]

Congratulations, Mike, and great report.

Tom

[Paul D]

Guess I will have to get out and see this comet this weekend. Actually there are two comets that are fairily close right now 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova just above the tail of Leo in Ursa Major and 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak. 41P is at the head of Leo.

[AndyG]

Congrats Mike, great report.