Observation of Comet C/2006 VZ13 LINEAR with the Kavalur 40-inch SCT!! |
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Recently during Akarsh's and My 4-night trip (between 9th and 13th
July) to Kavalur Observatory (with some college teachers for THEIR
research work) when the weather was bad for spectroscopy and as we
waited, we had the privilege to observe 4 objects (M22, M27, NGC
6826/Blinking Planetary and this comet) through the eyepiece of the
40-inch f/13 SCT telescope!!! The telescope operator during this night
of 12/13th May was Mr. Kuppuswamy (one of the co-discoverers of Uranus'
rings!) and his assistant Mr. Muneeraj. The former got interested and
finally agreed when I told him a comet is visible in the sky! I got the
precise co-ordinates of VZ13-LINEAR and we entered it in the telescope
console. The scope pointed at the location. After that, looking into the
eyepiece he manually scanned the 40-inch monster with a small hand pad.
I waited for him to hunt it down, and finally when he gave up after some
10-15 mins...I took over!!! But due to some high upper layer thin haze,
insufficient dark adaptation, very low field of this 1-metre scope (only
10-arcminutes or 1/3rd Full Moon!!) we both couldn't get it.
Simultaneously I used to every time run two floors up & down in the same
Observatory building to the computer room to see it's position in Cartes
du Ciel software which I myself installed, hence ruining my dark
adaptation each time! |