2013r1 20131201 robertson

 visual drawing and observation 
After a succesful Friday night I went down to Haw Wood, Suffolk last night (Sat 30/11) for a session with the 600mm Dobsonian. The forecast was for clear until about 9pm so I thought I'd get about 3.5 hours in. Was all set up to go just before 6pm but total cloud cover! Reckon I got about 45 mins observing between gaps up until about 9.30pm after which point I covered up - solid cloud cover. Even in the gaps there was thin stuff around so mag 5-ish but at 8.30pm did find 154P Brewington manually with the red dot finder and 21Ethos e/p (x129, 46' FOV). Even though very claggy skies, it was obvious when I came across it in the FoV in the big dob. 13 Ethos and comet filter succesively made it worse. I had the Argo-Navis on but not using it for this (haven't worked out how to download comets to the Argo yet) but remembered I could get a position from it which I noted as RA: 22h 42m, Dec: 9 deg 30' as of 8.35pm Checking my Sky6 program just now gave 22:43 and 9:43 for that time - splitting hairs. It's still just a faint fuzz and not very exciting. 
  
This where I'm showing my age now (60 next year!) went to bed  early but leaving the scope ready to go with a minimal cover on it. Woke at 1am for a call of nature, looked out and could see some stars breaking through but thought it was just going to be a tease as contrary to the forecast. I was tired (age) and cold (age) so got back into bed for a warm up thinking I'll get up in a bit and have another look - I woke at 5am to stonking clear skies!! I was out with cup of tea in hand and scope uncovered operational by 5.20am. Decided to look for C 2013 R1 LOVEJOY having checked up where I plotted it in my pocket sky atlas looked up to locate the faint field stars and as you say Dale, there it was N/E! Didn't have the giant bins with me but did have 7x50's and 15x70's. Glorious sight in both pairs with an obvious tail curving over two degrees. Even thought I could detect the tail N/E when I put the bins down but couldn't be sure if that was just a 'memory' thing after the binocular view. My immediate impression was, 'who needs ISON anyway? this is a glorious comet view which has been largely overshadowed by ISON.' Next was a view in the big dob with 21 Ethos. Absolutely glorious sight, the tail which was so bright could be traced through a full 3 FoV's (about 2 degrees) and the curve was so obvious. It had a large bright nucleus with a very bright stellar core. In the same FoV as the head and part of the tail I could see an elongated galaxy which I've since identified as NGC 5772 at visual mag 12.9, photographic 14.2. Time was 5.35am, just at the end of astro dark, had to sketch this but wanted to look for C 2013 V3 NEVSKI first before it got too light. Located it fairly easy with the 21 Ethos but tenuous, just a faint fuzz. Decided to do a quick sketch of this first just for the record but was a bit of a mistake as I didn't get back onto Lovejoy for a sketch until just after 6am and it was getting noticebly brighter - I could just detect the galaxy (which I had seen detail in - bright elongated core and dimmer elongated halo) and the extent of the tail was dimming. Sketch made btwn 0605 and 0613 up the ladder :-) 
20131201 Andrew Robertson