Paul,

Thanks for the report and drawing and thanks, Wayne, for the image.

I managed to image the comet a couple of nights ago on the 19th using my
HD11 + ASI6200 keeping the exposure short so as to not saturate the
central condensation. The FoV is 45 x 30 arcmin, N up. Processing the
stacked image is hard since the core is so much brighter than the outer
coma and tail. This image:

https://nickdjames.com/Comets/2024/2023a3_20241019_181006_ndj.jpg

attempts to show the full dynamic range but I am not entirely happy with
it yet. It uses a mild unsharp mask and a log stretch. The insets show
the a log stretch without unsharp mask and a Larsen-Sekanina filter with
a rotation angle of 10 deg.

There is clearly a lot going on in the central part of the coma and
visual observers with large telescopes can probably pick up a lot of
this. Imagers often tend to saturate the central core and thus lose this
detail but modern cameras have a huge dynamic range and so are capable
of capturing it if used with care.

Please keep up the visual observations whenever you get a chance.

Nick.

On 21/10/2024 21:58, Wayne Hawley wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> I was setting up for observing asteroids this evening and during my setup
> took a few images of the comet..
>
> This one is a typical image 0.36m F6.7 SDSSr' 20s 2x2, SX 694 CCD.
>
> [image: 2023 A3 Tsuchinshan_20241021_190245_20s.jpg]
> Regards,
>
> Wayne Hawley Z09
>
>
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 at 21:50, Paul Abel - paul.abel at yahoo.co.uk (via
> baa-comet list)<baa-comet@simplelists.com>  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I had to make some tests at the University of Leicester Observatory this
>> evening and decided to observe the comet since the cloud cleared in time.
>> The Observatory houses a 508mm (20 inch) Planewave Dall-Kirkham and I used
>> a power of x108 to observe the comet.  Attached is a drawing made with the
>> telescope- there were a number of interesting points, namely that the
>> overall colour of the comet appeared to be a distinctly golden-yellow.  The
>> core of the comet was very bright and it seemed to be elongated and
>> elliptical rather than a circular condensation.
>>
>> Alas I was unable to make any magnitude estimates as there were no
>> sufficient field stars which could be used as a comparison.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> -Paul