Peter,

Excellent picture.

Hopefully this will encourage everyone to make an effort to get out to
observe this comet while the moon is out of the way. It has been
remarkably well-behaved and is around mag 6 now on track to get to mag 5
at the end of the month.

The ion tail has a very low surface brightness but fast optics will
bring it out. I assume that this was the 100mm f/2. Did you use it wide
open?

We cross the comet's orbital plane on January 23 so we might see some
interesting dust features then.

Nick.

On 18/01/2023 15:18, Peter Carson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF) is looking good and is now a nice binocular object from a
> fairly dark site. Early this morning at about 3am I ventured to Paglesham in
> east Essex to get away from the worst of the lights and could easily see it in
> my 10 x 56 binoculars. The sky was a little milky, I think had conditions been
> better and my eyes a little younger I might have seen it naked eye. Binoculars
> showed a slightly asymmetric coma approximately 8 arcminutes in diameter and a
> tail around 45 arcminutes long towards the NW.
>
> I decided to have a go imaging using a Canon 60Da DSLR and 100mm lens on an
> Astrotrac.  The attached picture is a of stack of 12 x 90 sec exposures with the
> comet’s motion frozen against the background stars. The image records the tail
> going off the frame after 6.5 degrees.
>
> Speaking of freezing I had a problem getting all my gear back in the car after
> my imaging session ended  approaching 04:30am. The car’s tail gate had frozen
> shut so the tripod, astrotrac and cases of other bits had to be threaded in
> through the drivers door.
>
> Peter
>
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