Lester Barnes of South Australia has continued to produce a great series of
widefield images of the comet night by night and with his permission I'm posting
a small animated gif of his shots from the last two mornings. Also a small gif
of my images, quality not good especially this morning. Not conclusive by any
means, but they appear to show the faint tail extending well out. In mine maybe
at least 37-deg to IC 2602 (Southern Pleiades) and Lester's maybe out to the top
of the frame (about 42-deg). Don't have exact times for Lester's - probably
around 16:00 UT each morning.
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww271/Rob_Kau/Lestergifanim31Dec-01JanUT.gif
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww271/Rob_Kau/gifanim31Dec11-01Jan12.gif

I observed the comet naked-eye last night (14:30, 01 Jan 2012 UT) and could see
the tail with averted vision extending as far as Delta Muscae (~ 22 deg). The
first degree or two from the head were not visible to me. Surface brightness
was considerably less than the SMC.

Cheers -

Rob Kaufman
Bright, Victoria, Australia


--- In comets-ml@yahoogroups.com, jbortle@... wrote:
>
> By physical necessity and as I've pointed out previously, the dust tail of
> 2011 W3 SHOULD be continuing to lengthen...at least until the surface
> brightness of the outermost portions drop completely below the detection
limits
> of the method being employed. For the unaided eye I'm afraid that this will
> occur fairly soon. However, for appropriately long exposed, highly
> processed, fairly small-scale images this interval should be considerably
> extended.
>
> If astro-imagers familiar with the sorts of image processing done to bring
> out the absolute threshold details in such objects as galaxies apply their
> techniques to appropriate images of the comet I see no reason for the
> ultimate length of the tail not turning out to be something in the order of
> 50-60 degrees by mid January. I know that years ago when I dabbled in this
area
> I could bring out details far beyond what I ever imagined were in the
> original images (although the pictures no longer were very pretty to look
at!)
>
> J.Bortle
>
>
>
>
> In a message dated 1/1/2012 12:22:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> seargent@... writes:
>
>
> Hi Rob and all,
> Yes, I did put down a couple of wrong numbers (lack of sleep I guess).
> Still, it does not make a very great difference. The revised length comes out
> at 39 degrees ... and this time I checked the numbers! The end appeared to
> be near Theta Carinae, visible with averted vision only in "flashes".
> Perhaps it was averted imagination, but I think it was real.
> Cheers,
> David
>
>
>
>
> To: comets-ml@yahoogroups.com
> From: rmn@...
> Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2012 14:09:35 +1100
> Subject: Re: [comets-ml] Tail still long
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 1 Jan 2012, David Seargent wrote:
>
> > The tail has cleared the brightest part of the MW and this morning
> > (Dec. 31. 1600 UT) I'm sure that I could trace it with averted vision
> > into Carina; a length of (wait for it!) 45 degrees! The sky was very
> > clear with a limiting naked-eye magnitude of around 6.5 or better.
>
> Hi David,
> I'd doubt this will be correct. My photos show the tail much more
> clearly than to the naked eye, up to 33 deg, just into Carina,
> but I can't trace it crossing the dark zone to the SE of eta Carinae.
> 45 deg would take it over theta Carinae. Calculation error?
>
> Check my fish-eye shot from this morning at
>
> http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rmn/C2011W3.htm
>
> I'll reorganise this page in the next few days.
>
> Cheers, Rob
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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