User:TheStarmon

An amateur astronomer from N. Colorado, that manages The Galactic WareHouse

Comet Bradfield Nearing the Sun Taken From the Pawnee Prairie Grasslands

• 
  Comet Bradfield from The NE Colorado
• 
  Before the Jet
• 
  After the Jet

Star Party Log

    Well, I did see the Bradfield comet that morning.  Finished my setup & configuration about 2:30am at Cactus Flats.
   (Bradfield broke the horizon at 3:31am).  Looking due east, I found M31 & Mirach  & aimed the Pentax MX SLR w/a 
   100mm lens & took a 15 min exposure using  Kodak 400 slide film (remember that technology?).  I could not see the 
   comet, but managed to capture it on the first frame.  With a little shifting, to center M31, is the second shot of 
   12 minutes.  About 4:30am, just noticeable, was a lightening of the horizon. Twilight begins!

Two 5 minute narrow-field piggybacked, taken between 3:51-:23am

    Bradfield's tail was over 11* long on these images. Managed to capture M31/M32 in the center & the nebula NGC 281, 
   in Cassiopeia, on the upper left edge. Brian Webb from the Space Archive has added the right image on his web site 
   Space Archive which lists the Vandenberg Rocket launch times. So I shifted to small field imaging.The two narrow-field 
   exposures through the 80 mm,..................  7,5,5 minutes long.The Stellarvue showed a slender linear tail 5*-6*. 
   I noticed no knots of dust/gas and the coma was almost a pinpoint of the most beautiful Azure blue, almost pastel. 
   And in the C-14 with a 14mm eyepiece (279x) the coma appeared oblong, not round.

The Galactic WareHouse

The Starmon's Wikipedia Page

--Think cosmic !! (talk) 06:58, 06 December 2010 (UTC)