This week of the 10th of November, was really the last that northern hemisphere Earthlings get a decent chance at the four comets in our early eastern skies. Comets, ISON, Lovejoy, Linear and Encke are in their last positioning before their dive into perihelion and either flare up, disintegrate or....do nothing. On a cold and gusty night/early morning....Chicago Astronomers Bill, Javier and Myself head out to our private observation site along the lakefront and set-up our scopes to catch as many of the four comets as we could.

Arriving at 11:00 pm, we use our vehicles as a make-shift wind break...



It did help, but the temps started to plummet throughout our session and hitting a low of 34 degrees - (lower if one factors in the wind chill!) Did little to block the intrusive glare of street lighting. I brought the C11 on the CG-5 mount and Bill & Javier brought along an assortment of scopes, but they used mostly wide field instruments. The skies were clear as we started out comet hunt, but about an hour into it, clouds from the northwest started to slide over us...

We waited for a awhile as Bill was sure the mass will certainly slide away.



We tinkered around a bit with our gear waiting, took some pics and soon enough, the trailing edge of the cloud mass was in sight...

Lovejoy was our first target for this session. using my remote control via iPad mini, finding it was a snap..and even visible in binocular....in the C11 - it did not disappoint us. My my on-board laser worked well to assist in guiding the crew to the comet area...





No tail was perceived nor color in the eyepiece, but the cyanogen green glow of Lovejoy became apparent with imaging...



Here above, the area of Lovejoy influence is teased out.

I shot frames in different white light balances, but these next display the nice green glow of the coma...



Our next target would be The Dud of the Century....Comet ISON, but she wasn't due to rise until a bit later, so I popped around the cosmos for a bit...



King Jupiter was very sharp for this session....



Mars was now up for a peek, but really....not an impressive sight in Earthbound telescopes...



But, you can start to make our some surface features....the winds this session were just not suitable for steady imaging...

Finally...ISON was up high enough to start targeting and see what the hoopla is all about.

Comet of the century...not.

Barely discernible in the aperture of the C11 through Chicago skies...a faint smudge was all that could be observed...and sometimes we all doubted if the smudge was the comet or not. It was through imaging that confirmation was achieved. In this next series of images, one can clearly observe how fast of a clip the ISON is moving...



All taken within a 45 minute period, it would make a nice little movie if I would stack them.


Dawn arrived and stopped our comet hunt for this session at about 5:30 am...



With Mercury rising in the east, the two other comets, Linear and Encke were not observable and lost in the muck and glare. But, we got the other two. Bill and Javier took some great looking images of the comets and should be posting them here shortly. Lovejoy is the winner here and should be making the headlines. Unless ISON does something spectacular...it should just make it's run around/dive into the Sun and go away...taking with it the insipid speculation of the "Comet of the Century. Kohutek was be ashamed.

This is the first documented imaging of the two comets from the city by Astronomers...and of course....by the Chicago Astronomer crew. Full service...while you wait...

After more quick peeks, we start to break-down our site...



Chicago Astronomer Comet hunters.....



A chilled Bill, Joe and Javier.

Let's see what comets will do after perihelion and see if we do a public session. But for now, Chicago Astronomer fans can stay in bed.