[BAA 00298] Comet C/2006 VZ13 (LINEAR)

[Rick]

BAA electronic bulletin No. 00298 - http://www.britastro.org/

Comet C/2006 VZ13 (LINEAR)
This comet is now at its brightest and, at around 8th magnitude, it is visible in binoculars from a dark site. It should be easily visible in a low power telescope field as a circular fuzz a few arc minutes across and its motion against the star background will be visible after a few minutes' observation.

At the moment the comet is well placed, high in the sky at around BST midnight. It is currently moving through Draco into Bootes and the next few days, with the Moon out of the way, will be best time to look for it if the weather cooperates. There is an ephemeris on the Comet section website:

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/06vz13.uk

or you can generate your own using the JPL Horizons website:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

If you have a digital camera you may be able to pick it up on a long driven exposure. Comets tend to appear green on colour photographs since they have strong emission lines in the green part of the spectrum. This often helps to identify them on photographs as shown in this example I took last weekend:

http://www.theastronomer.org/comets/2007/2006vz13_20070707_ndj.jpg

There are some recent images of this comet on the web here:

http://www.theastronomer.org/comets.html#2006vz13

Please send any observations to the Comet Section.


Erratum
=======
The web address on e-bulletin 297 should have read:

http://britastro.org/iandi

Nick James. CCD advisor, Comet Section.

[JohnP]

For a moment there Rick I thought you'd actually got in to Astrophotography & taken images of the comet...! It would of course be great if you or other members did - would make a nice change from the regular bunch of contributors to the astrophotography section...

John

[Fay]

I thought the same thing.

Fay

[Rick]

Just drawing folks' attention to a potential target...