Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) near constellation little dipper.

Comet C2022 E3 (ZTF) with three tails

When looking more closely at my image of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) I saw a third tail. But I thought this was an artifact created by processing the image. 

Untill today, I never heard about comets having more then 2 tails. I always read that comets have 2 tails, one dust tail and one plasma (ion or gas tail). This morning I read an article on Spaceweather mentioning C/2022 E3 (ZTF) having 3 tails : see this link

So why 3 tails? This phonomenon is an optical illusion weh seeing the comet from Earth. How this happens is explained below (source wikipedia).

As a conclusion, my image of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has 3 tails, one dust tail, one plasma and one anti tail. Below I added false colors to show more detailed all three tails.

Sunspot AR3190

The huge sunspot AR3190 is about 710MH and visible with the naked eye. Through the thin clouds and with sunglass I was able to see the sunspot.

Sunspot AR3190 has a couple of lightbridges. 

The image was made using TAL200K f/8.5 and ASI290MM. 

Setting : ND3.8 solarfilter, OIII filter and IR/UV filter.

Software : SharpCap 4, AS3!, IMPPG, CS4

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

 

I waked up at 4h30 to image the comet C/2020 E3 (ZTF). Temperature around -3°C and a layer of 5cm snow. Polar allignement using my guidecamera and sharpcap4. After 3-star allignment I connected with Stellarium and N.I.N.A. When imaging the comet, N.I.N.A. gave an errow which I was not able to fix. As a consequence all pictures made with SharpCap 4.

Setting: TLAPO80/480 f/6 and ASI2600MC

Software: SharpCap, Stellarium, APP, CS4

Lights : 20x45s, 10x60s; Darks 10x45s, 10x60s; Bias 10x; Flats 10x

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

My first picture of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF). The comet is currently in constellation Bootes and moving into constellation Draco. My best estimation is magnitude 6.7 (see magn marked around the comet). The comet is greenish.

Setting: Nikon D7500 24mm f/3.8 ISO1600 15s

The Sun in OIII January 15, 2023

This morning I could image the Sun before clouds cover the sky. On the easter limb of the Sun some big sunspot groups, AR3190, AR3191 en AR3192 are showing up.

Setting: Nikon D7500, TAL200K f/8.5, ND3.8 and OIII filter

Software: ICE, IMPPG, CS4 and adding false colors

Lecture Black Holes and The BlackGEM telescope Array

Today I attended a lecture on black holes via Radboud Unuiversity and provided by Prof. Dr. Peter Jonker, who is also the Project Scientist of BlackGEM (see below). The lecture started with a good overview of the special and general relativity theory in order to explain the concept of a black hole. A couple of things I will be remembering:

- nothing is moving faster then light (speed of light); when reading this different, nothing or an empty space can move faster then light.
- Accretion onto a black hole is the most efficient process for emitting energy from matter in the Universe, releasing up to 40% of the rest mass energy of the material falling in. As a comparison, nuclear fision and fusion convert mass into energy by 0.08% & 0.7%

- when a star has a mass so large that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, it's called a dark star according newtonian laws; the same dark star is described as a "hole" when applying general relativity by introducing space-time curvature.

BlackGEM is a wide-field telescope array, located ar ESA La Silla Chile, dedicated to measure the optical emission from pairs of merging neutron stars and black holes. BlackGEM will be triggered by the Advanced LIGO & Virgo gravitational wave detectors. ic.

BlackGEM will start with 3 telescopes each 65cm diameter, and each equipped with a 110 Mpix camera, consisting of a single 10.5k x 10.5k CCD sampling the sky at 0.56 ”/pix.