 Current Events:ICSTARS Owner, Fred Bruenjes discovers Comet C/2012 C2 (BRUENJES) |
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 ~50 images of Comet C/2012 C2 (BRUENJES) stacked. |
 Comet discoverer, Fred Bruenjes |
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The telescope would have a long journey before an ultimate destination at Lake Titicaca. First, it would need configured and a program generated for automated comet hunting here at the ICSTARS Ranch. Sadly, in 2007, when Vic Winter passed away, the comet hunting program's future looked grim. Enter Fred Bruenjes in late 2007, avid astronomer extraordinaire. With his lifelong goal of discovering a comet Fred was eager to put the 14" to good use. His electrical engineering background and forte' for electro-mechanical configuration meant Fred could perform all the necessary steps to bring the telescope itself up to full speed and actually hunt for new discoveries. After dreaming of finding a comet since the age of 10 and planning for comet hunting using his own equipment, Fred was delighted to roll his sleeves up on the project and get going.
Next Fred decided to write special search script software of his own. He already writes remote camera control software for eclipse photography with his Eclipse Orchestrator program. Now, he would add pointing controls to and a sky projection algorithm in order to select tiles of the sky and telescope movement. This special search script used what's called a 'hammer projection' which displays the entire night sky including the position of the sun and the horizon. That available sky was divided by tiles sized to the field of view of the camera as mounted on the telescope. Tiles in GREY show the part of the sky visible above the horizon. With this software, Fred can map (in RED) the areas of the sky which have been recently surveyed by larger telescope arrays; which areas are either never or rarely surveyed so that he can search areas in which his odds of a new discovery were higher. The observatory dome is not automated and doesn't move so Fred can only image in one swath of longitude at a time without moving the dome manually. Fred therefore assigns a search parameter of the area visible within the dome slit (shown in BLUE) Now, as of 2009 Fred was equipped, primed, qualified and ready to search. At one point, he imaged something that he suspected was a new object, but did not turn it in fast enough. Just the night before, another observer discovered the same comet Fred had, so he missed out on his first comet by 1 night's observing. He had actually shut down just one frame before the tile which contained that comet in an earlier observing session. Fred was very discouraged to know that if he had been more efficient in his searches he might have his name on a comet. Later that year, an unlucky lightning strike to the ground near the dome would sadly short circuit the electronic PCB board within the LX200, causing a complete shutdown of the entire system. Unfortunately, as Meade had significantly downsized and moved most operations outside of the US, a simple replacement of the board was not possible. The whole scope would have to go back to the factory, with international shipping and certainly a complicated customs process. But since Fred happens to design electronic PCB boards, he chose instead to fabricate a drive board of his own. He thought, if he could design the board, perhaps he could make a number of special modifications specific to comet hunting. He spent the better part of 2010 and 2011 fabricating the board. It was quite complicated and required more than just fabricating an electronic board with pieces soldered onto it. It required actual drive programming. This meant Fred would have to spend hours out in the observatory prodding the board with the oscilloscope for test measurements and programming tweaks. Ultimately, he made some slight modifications to the method by which the motor drove to reach the designated location that caused the instrument to move much faster. Come January of 2012, the telescope was once again stable enough to image once again. Through the month of January, 2012, he performed a number of imaging sessions but was still not as satisfied with his configuration as he wanted. He was disappointed to see that the camera could not download the image while the telescope slewed to the next position. So with a few more nights' work, he worked around this limitation and succeeded. Today, the setup is capable of searching about 270 square degrees per hour to a limiting magnitude of 16. So by early February, Fred finally arrived from his long journey to a point where he could actively and efficiently comet hunt again.
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 Much has been learned about Comet C/2012 C2 (Bruenjes) since its discovery. We know that the comet was actually discovered AFTER passing its closest approach to planet Earth. At the time of its discovery, Comet Bruenjes was actually between Earth and the planet Venus on its way in around the Sun. The comet, at its closest earth distance was 0.555 AU, that is to say that Comet Bruenjes came just over 1/2 the distance between the earth and the sun - away from our planet. It also comes extremely close to earth's orbit itself. In its path in, Comet Bruenjes passes just 0.052AU away from the actual path of Earth's orbit. Fortunately, the earth was not in position at that time to be at high risk. Objects within 0.05AU are considered to be at risk as Near Earth Objects.
The comet was estimated at about 15th magnitude at the time of its discovery and because it is continuing to move away from earth, it is getting dimmer and dimmer every day. It will leave the solar system on a course that does not come close to earth's orbit, so it will not be brighter than it is now at any time on this orbital visit to the center of our solar system. The comet's approach to the Sun is close enough that we must observer it again after it passes by the Sun to be sure of its ultimate orbit. Only then can it be determined whether it might return again. Ephemerides for the comet can be found in common Astronomical positioning programs. |
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and the computer program determines where exactly to target images for that session. Comet searching is all about detecting movement between frames over time. This means that the camera must take one image, wait and take another image after a period of time and see if anything changed positions. This technique is called 'blinking'. Much like flipping pages in a cartoon book, objects that move in the sky appear to move when the images are blinked. Lots of anomalies occur when imaging, so it's always best to image at least 3 frames for better clarity on a potential moving object. In Fred's comet image control script, the program will direct the telescope and camera to capture an entire batch of images, return and take a second batch, then repeat for a third image of the full batch. We can see the blue tiles show where Fred might image tonight with the slit in this position. Green tiles show what he has already successfully imaged this week. 
February 10, 2012. Just weeks after bringing the Moonglow Observatory comet hunting equipment up to full operating capacity, Fred was now limited only by clear skies and his need to sleep. With a clear horizon and a few hours before moonrise, the conditions were prime for amateur comet hunting. "Look West" was the age-old advice to amateur comet hunters. So Fred pointed the observatory slit west and ran his imaging routine. The camera locked up and failed to restart automatically, but Fred ran the scan again - even though the moon was rising and would soon ruin exposures. Later that evening, Fred reduced the images by blinking them in 