How come you got school today? I thought everybody was given a long weekend off specially to view the comet....

The sky looks a bit more favourable now than last night, it rained in the morning and doesn't look like it will rain again later..... Mr.LKM, this will be OUR night! 

julchin_09, just get up at 3.00 am, look roughly North East, halfway between the horizon and right overhead. If you just look wildly all over this quadrant, (not Eithanius's Delta Quadrant please) chances are some of the photons from the comet will enter your eye even though you may not recognise it.....

White spots are caused by laser beams from your friends in Proxima Centauri, lah. The comet, on the other hand, leaves sparkling floaters in your eyes.  That's what I've got after straining my right eye through the telescope eyepiece for hours this morning.

This morning around 3.30 am, the sky around Cygnus was moderately clear for about 30 minutes. A quick scan with the binos showed the stars down to 5th magnitude, but still no comets.
So out came the telescope. It was a rush job to get the telescope tracking accurately using Deneb and Geinah cygni. When I slewed the telescope to 73P/SW3 - fragment C, (or rather where it should be, based on the epheremis from JPL/NASA) I barely had a few seconds to catch a glimpse of a small faint and fuzzy patch before the whole view was wiped out by clouds. I waited in vain for the skies to clear so that I could confirm I had indeed caught my first view of the comet.

It looks like all the effort has go to waste again. Even the Moon, Jupiter, Vega, Arcturus all disappeared behind the clouds by 4.30 am......brave Venus rose and made a few seconds appearance at about 5.30 am before the clouds got it too.

isn't your telescope computer driven.....?   

This was the one I really wanted, you're a quick minded dude, Eithanius!

After 3 continous nights without sleep, I'm still in the twilight zone. I forgot that 13th night moves into 14th morning and I asked you for the wrong day. Thanks again. I also noticed that I spelt Deneb and Gienah wrong. 

All images posted using the Forum's server get resampled and stamped with the LYN logo. That's why they get messed up, I think. If you want to retain your original quality, you'll have to link it to one of the third party image banks, I suppose.

snowmei: sorry for the kidding. If you need StarHunters' contact just holler. I know I've got it lying around somewhere...
Besides them, there's also the Astronomical Society of Malaysia, the infamous Astro Photographers Group of Malaysia, MNS Astro Special Interest Group, StarFinders......

But I don't need to mention my favourite one anymore.

The last time i'd encountered a meteor shower, i happened to be on the beach..... in PD....     

I don't think I know of any other famous place with beaches and the initials PD. 

Eithanius, what were you doing on the beach at night? If kissing your gf, I think those were not REAL shooting stars you saw lah....more like fireworks going off in your overloaded brain.   

Mr.LKM, what happened to your precious Autostar?

About the contacts, I'm still searching........alamak, got thousands of unsorted business cards to check out! Anyone can lend me a name card scanner? Might as well digitise the whole lot while I'm going through them anyway.....    

Better to input the ephemeris instead, otherwise you will have to keep manually changing the RA & Dec continuously to track the comet...... This comet is really speeding past Earth now!
BTW the weather prediction for KL tonight is partly cloudly......so let's hope we will be successful this weekend!

check back on post #658.

Ephemerides of almost every comet and asteriod you'd ever want is available at Nasa's Near Earth Object Program. 
link here: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/

Have fun!

Ya, they really made it difficult to see....like treasure hunt lah. 

I think I'm going to surrender doing visual observation of this comet. Only thing left is a camping trip and some astrophotography. But with the non-UHTC LX90 I think maybe the results will be disappointing. Your new LX90 will not face the same limitations. 

According to specs, there's a 10% difference in the light transmission - Which means its like a 7" scope versus your 8" monster! 

In order do astrophotography, it is important to know where to point, and how to get accurate tracking, so I think everything we talk about is relevant. Except maybe when I talk about space aliens...sorry.

I mainly use my Casio digicam with any telescope I can beg borrow or steal. The Philips TouCam is great for planets (with stacking), but it can't do much else unless I change some of the ics, and I need to bring along a notebook if I want to use it, so troublesome. Since the digicam can zoom in and out, I only need to bring along one 32mm eyepiece, so convenient. And with 7 megapixel shots of the full moon...the details are unbelievable! This thrashes the TouCam flat. Of course, there are others with different opinions.....

You won't know until you try them out. The LPI is an integrated solution so it's easier to use out of the box. It does realtime stacking as you watch, thus you see instant results.

With the ToUCam, you'll have to find third party software to do stacking, and do your own settings to acheive optimum results. It seems to be more suited to the experienced astrophotographer who is quite pc literate. i.e. you must know how to do video capture, and how to import the captured movies into the image processing software.

Both will give great results if you know how to tweak them to the maximum advantage.

BTW this is what I got with the ToUCam during the recent Jupiter opposition.
[attachmentid=109551]

Just to keep inline with the astrophotography theme so nobody can complain that we are not really doing astrophotography here.

It was clear by Kuala Lumpur standards. if you know what I mean.

Direct viewing through the eyepiece, can easily see the two centre bands, and the great spot. But the eddies in the clouds cannot make out lah. The moons no problem, very bright as usual.

But I only put the the ToUCam directly and did the video capture. I did not use any barlow. I think usually other ppl add in a 3x barlow for larger image and more detail. I was actually looking for the comet at that time and only slew to Jupiter for a quick  capture because I noticed the great spot. Then I went back to searching for the comet. I should have spent more time on Jupiter that night!   

That's one of the best shots of the moon posted here taken with a standard camera and normal telephoto! What equipment are you using? It looks like it will be excellent for recording the moon phases and both solar and lunar eclipses. 
My Casio is quite cacat at shooting the moon unaided...hehe. You can see for yourself how bad it is on page 12, post #229 of this thread. Don't blame me if you vomit.....

julchin_09, don't worry too much about trying to understand what we are talking about. Astrophotography is fun when you experiment with what you have. It gets boring when you get too technical.

BTW what happened to Choostar? She seems to have disappeared in Oct 2005. As a member of APGM, she would be great to help us out here!

Yes Genius. Im using my Canon for the pics. Eh, one day must pay you a visit. Teach my about some astronomy stuff....and let me check out the telescope you're using....

Wah. RM8000 for second hand? Where to get second hand unit?

Is this the one? Proves that you have to be loaded to reach the stars..... 

Wah....Nice...I get to see the real thing then...

Hmm...I will let you know bro. I will PM you when Im free....My place is just 5 mins from your house so no problem.... . Clear skies? Im going to take a look.....

Looks like the beginning of the Kluang Astronomy Club.....hehe.

Argh....Sky is so clear tonight. I wish I had a Meade .

yALAR....Damn bloody clear. Can see hundreds of stars as of now.....

One star though is particularly bright. Correct me if im wrong, but is that Venus?