First Light: Takahashi FTC-76 on Comet NEAT/2004 + 43 Gamma

by Richard Crisp

Yesterday evening was first light for my new Takahashi FTC-76 Fluorite Triplet refractor. This instrument has a history: not only is it a prototype of the product that was later released as the now-discontinued FCT-76, it was the same telescope used by Jay McNeil to discover "McNeil's Nebula" over near M78 a few months back.

My first light target was Comet NEAT/2004. As it turned out, 43 Gamma Cancri was smack dab in the middle of the tail, just behind the coma. To make things even more interesting, I also captured the Meteor that R. Bissinger had reported viewing from the East Bay.

This is only the second time I have imaged a comet, and the first time to use this scope at all. Taking the images in RGB is tricky because the stars wind up in all sorts of colors :-) So that the impact of the comet is not lost completely on weird colored stars that are too many in number, I also published my luminance shot which just gives the feeling of motion. I do like the color shot for the detail in the comet and this one is very colorful as we've seen before.

I was taking ten second exposures to avoid having to guide on the comet. During one of those luminance frames, I got a streak from the Meteor mentioned abov. At the time I did not know what I had captured but knew it was moving fast because it covered 1.5 degrees FOV in no more than 10 seconds. I guess things that move that fast usually aren't satellites and this was too dim to be an airplane, so I presume it was the meteor that was mentioned in other observing reports.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/comet_neat_page.htm

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 16, 2004 19:21:41 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 19:15:25 PT