Szabo, Sandor (Sopron, Hungary)

Sandor SzaboSometimes I use the BAA image archive to see what comets can be reached and I also read the Comet’s Tale. I usually observe with my friend, Zoltan Toth. He has a 20”, I have a 24” homemade Dobsonian. The 24” mirror was produced by Carl Zambuto. We usually observe from out of Csapod, a very small village surrounded by 10 kms of forests. I live in Sopron (up left corner of the attached picture), surrounded by Austria. Csapod is the darkest place near us. If there is fog, we travel to an Austrian mountain. For faint comets we usually check motion, go back an hour later for example. When it is unambiguous, clearly has comatery features, I feel not necessary to check motion, not have time.

Also we observe the supernovas from this site:http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/supernova.html. Our limit is around 16.5-17 magnitudes for SNs with the 24”. This time Zoltan arrived to our site at 6 pm, so he could observe 22 comets, I reached the place only around 9 pm, so I had 18 positive. We have observed in parallel, so the two telescopes made possible to see two comets at the same time. That is why brighters are observed with 50.8cm, some with the 60.3 cm telescope. I have also observed some deep-sky, for example globular clusters in NGC185 and 147 and M33, some SN remnants in Cas and Aur.

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