I should add that I was unsuccessful in my attempt to visually pick up the forward tail in the 20” telescope. Now, there was some haze which scattered light from the city so it’s perhaps not surprising, but I do wonder if anyone at a really dark site as seen it?

Cheers,
-Paul

--
Sent on the move.

> On 21 Oct 2024, at 23:41, Paul Abel <paul.abel@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> Thanks for the feedback and the link to your image. I’ll continue to observe it with large telescopes for as long as possible. There was a lot of subtle detail in the core tonight and I had the image of a very active nucleus and core.
>
> Cheers,
> -Paul
>
> --
> Sent on the move.
>
>> On 21 Oct 2024, at 23:31, Nick James <ndj@nickdjames.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>
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