"The first night of the winter" - with two new comets

[Ross Wilkinson]

I had my comet-spotting system out last night for the first time since 8th April (the most recent set-up date is stored in my hand-control).

Rather to my surprise, I remembered how to set it all up and had it ready pointed at my first target during twilight - but then I had to wait for the sky to darken before I could start my imaging run. Even then, I could only manage first 15 and then 30-sec exposures, as the sky was still too bright. However I could still detect comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) in Ophiuchus, although it's only 13th magnitude at the moment (and only expected to peak at 12th magnitute next spring):

This is from 29x 30-sec with the old Mx716 CCD camera on my C8 SCT operating at f/3.5.

My second target was C/2022 E3 ( ZTF ), which is high up in Hercules at the moment. This is also around magnitude 13, but will be significantly brighter (6th magnitude?) next spring, as it tracks through the Northern sky.

It was reasonably dark by then (nearly 11pm) so I could use 1-min exposures and the comet was quite distinct, even showing a significant tail:

This is from 30x 60-sec - and no finder-arrows needed for this! That nearby "bright" star is only magnitude 7.

This is the twelfth different comet which I've seen this year, and brings my tally up to 114 (plus another 27 which I've imaged using remote telescopes).

[Ross Wilkinson]

Looking back at this post, I've spotted a couple of errors...

The first comet was in fact C/2020 K1 (PANSTARRS) which was also in Ophiuchus at that time. I had already observed C/2017 K2 last year.

Secondly, I'd not accounted for the meridian-flip and posted both my images with South at the top - here are the corrected versions:

C/2020 K1 (PANSTARRS)  on 5-Aug

C/2022 E3 ( ZTF ) on 5-Aug