Saw my 6th comet, 4/P Faye, felt as of discovering a comet !

Home > Diary > 23/09/06

Our Schedule:

I was waiting to go for an observing session on 23rd because of the New Moon period. We had an observing session last week itself on 16th and a big number, 14, had turned up but to everyone's presence, it was a disaster. It was all thick clouds all night long and not a single second of clearance. So this time many of them made a second decision of coming again so far, because the weather was not so good also at the time when we were supposed to leave, so no one turned up. I was all alone and my criteria is that I need atleast 1 human being with me to accompany there, to observe all alone in the dark, which I'm not comfortable of. After much persuasion I had to convince my old house neighbor friend's mother, to let his 10th std. son come with me. She wasn't comfortable but finally I got one member with me. Just before I was leaving I got a call from one new member joined our group, Abhay. He too was making second thoughts looking at the weather. Finally the 3 of us somehow met at the bus-stop to Dodballapur at 3:30 pm which is late. We sat in a bus which had just started moving. We ran, boarded it and reached Dodballapur at around 5:15 pm. When we got down we saw the bus to our observing site, Hosahalli, all jam-packed and totally crowded. Instead of making second thoughts of waiting for another bus, I insisted Abhay that we board only that so that we can reach early. We entered a bus where you had no place to move your toe once you're standing. For nearly half hour or so I had to stand exactly in one position, just like a statue!

We reached Hosahalli and setup my telescope, which took no lesser than 2 mins. because it was a dobsonain mount, as compared to the equatorials that I've been using which takes one heck of a time. This is the first time ever I used my telescope in a dark sky location! I checked the collimation in the darkness, but after some very slight confusion about it, I left it as it is.

Observing:

After setting up the instrument, the clouds were all over there with some free patches. I aimed for M57 to start with. It was not so good. Then came M13 in Hercules, which was not so spectacular. As the clouds were passing I tried to get some objects but then it was too late and most of the times it used to get totally cloudy. This time I was trying to find the faint celestial visitor we had got, 177/P Barnard. I had just found the nearby naked-eye star and mould have taken some minutes to get to the location where it was, but just by then the clouds were all over. The Sagittarius Milky-Way was great just some moments after darkness. In the meanwhile we had some students of the school come, probably between 7-8. I showed them M30 along with M15. They too waited for some clearing and I should say that Abhay was really interested in them and kept them busy discussing with them on all topics. After that the clouds came in for long and the 3 of us waited looking up and lying down. It was a frustrating wait indeed, not knowing at all whether it'll be worth our trip or not and will I get to observe all that I wanted to or not. We were waiting till around 1:00 am or so when we decided to get up after some time. We slept and when I fortunately opened my eyes at 2 am, I got a whole new view of the Heaven's, cloudless and dark. This was it !! what I had just waited for. Never expected it to clear at all, looking at that as well as the past situation, it was a miracle indeed !! clearance all over.

I got up and became active as never before in the entire day. Now the problem was that there were few hours till sunrise and there were SO MANY things to view and very less time. All my tons of finder-charts were still in the bag, and now I didn't know what to observe!! Not knowing when clouds will be coming again, I tried to hurry up, and it really happened, I got clearance only for another 2 hours exact and the army of clouds suddenly started marching at 4 am. In those two hours I got 1 brand-new comet, 5 new galaxies, 1 new globular cluster and the repeat stuff. Here is the object list and description:

Old objects:

Andromeda galaxy and companions : Wonderful and very bright with a much brighter core. It extended more than the field of view, all bright till the edges. It's companion M32 was as usual the bright stellar object, and M110 was also surprisingly bright and big.

Triangulum galaxy : I wanted to see some details in the galaxy like features within it, because I had read somewhere that a 10" can show a bright emission nebula in the galaxy which is designated itself as a different number. But it was nothing other than a low surface brightness object, but brighter this time as it is some other times. Core was bright and arms were the same, slightly fainter than the core. It covered the field of view. But one thing what I found out was that it appeared diagonal in structure and not as a round spiral galaxy. This is what sometimes the photos show !

Sculptor galaxy : This was one object where there was considerable improvement than we had ever seen it. A 9.5" DID make some difference over the regular 8" apertures we had been using. With a 8" all it appeared was a long and thin fuzzy feature. But a 9.5" made the object much 'brighter' than before. The was some enhancement in the core of the edge-on galaxy.

NGC 247 : This was a very faint galaxy with a 8" but with my 9.5" it appeared easy to see and just a little brighter.

NGC 288 : Was visible better and bigger than previous times. Comparatively bright.

M77 and NGC 1055 : The Messier galaxy was visible easily as a bright very small spot. The nearby faint galaxy NGC 1055 (edge-on probably) was visible with some staring in the eyepiece.

Crab Nebula : This was visible as a medium bright hazy patch, double-tear-drop in shape.

M74 : This was brighter as it is some times when we have seen it. It had a brighter core and fainter arms, but it was slightly larger too.

Orion Nebula : Spotted this before twilight, was as usual.

New objects:

Galaxies:

NGC 1317 in Fornax : I aimed at the region of the bright radio galaxy Fornax A. This time it was bright as some times before. But just below that I saw a spot, which was probably just a magnitude fainter. I had never seen that before with the 8" that we were using. Now the only thought occurred to me, what can that object be, can it be a new one? I had no idea but was also thinking that probably that's a companion on the bright galaxy. And it was possible too as that region was a galaxy region, in Fornax. Now for the next few hours only one object lingered on my mind and I was very eager about it. But finally I withheld the suspense and when I saw it in the software, it turned exactly as I was thinking. It was NGC 1317 at magnitude 11. This was the closest I came to discovering a comet but finally I ended up "discovering" a galaxy !

NGC 1512 in Horologium, NGC 1291 in Eridanus, NGC 986 in Fornax, NGC 772 in Aries

Globular clusters: NGC 2298 in Puppis

Comet 4/P Faye: This is a periodic comet discovered by Hervé Faye (Royal Observatory, Paris) on 1843 November 23.

I had a slight challenge in star-hopping to the comet around 4 degrees from the naked-eye star (mag. 5.09) Iota Aries. I've not star-hopped such a small, but long for me distance before. But all thanks to the finder chart I succeeded in it! After reaching the spot being slightly sure of it, I looked into the eyepiece. Initially there was just nothing there which confused me. But finally after staring deeper, a ghostly patch at the far limit of visibility started emerging. It was really faint. Further staring revealed a feeling as if something is there. This object was not a sight for those observers who like bright objects in the eyepiece. First of all a little practice of observing faint objects was necessary to spot this. I would have run over this object a million times if it was not for that finder chart, without it the object would never have existed.

Further staring, revealed a circular shape with nothing else visible except a faint ghostly patch. Illusions were making me feel at one moment that I could see an extension in one direction, but that illusion soon disappeared. It was a faint comet, no doubt but I feel, moreover reading at others observers' reports worldwide, that it was more of a condensed object, meaning brighter in appearance and not that of a low surface brightness profile. For e.g. when I first spotted 73/P SW-3 it too was this faint but it was more of an invisible object, with a low surface brightness (s.b.). But if you compare this object, it too was very faint, but not of low s.b. as mentioned above. slightly more higher s.b. But in appearance both were nearly the same. The finder chart is attached below.

I'm forced to believe that I saw this object because below the star I "felt" as if something is present after more staring. See the finder chart 2 below, and notice the small and faint star just above the comet. My telescope gives very bad images for stars, so they appear diffuse. As a result this 11.18 mag. star from the Tycho catalog (TYC0629-00903-1) too appeared out-of-focus. Now, I never understood then and nor do remember now whether which one was fainter. Probably the comet was fainter than the de-focused star. So I can approximate that the comet is somewhere is around that magnitude. But this estimation is made with a bad telescope optics, so it can be just approximated.

Finder chart for comet 4/P Faye:

 

Comet 4/P Faye - wide field view - in Aries	Comet 4/P Faye - zoomed in view - nearby star's magnitude noted, which was used for rough comparison