A short report on the comet hunt by Anja Drews and Carsten Debbe

At 03:15 a.m., the silence of the night is torn by a sound... the alarm clock rings.
The weather forecast was not really good, but: If you don't dare, you don't win!
Only in the east, about two handbreadths above the horizon, is a strip of clear sky visible. So put on your clothes, put your equipment in the car, and off you go. You don't have to drive far, as a place with a suitable view and cardinal direction was scouted out days in advance. This time it is about 5 kilometers to Osterberg (near Hasbergen). A Seestar S30 and an S50 will be set up.

At 04:30 a.m., the currently visible comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) has crawled over the horizon, but is still invisible to us and the telescopes.

The brightened sky over Osnabrück is an obstacle. Anja's Seestar has problems with plate solving at the beginning. Due to the higher magnification, fewer stars can be seen on the sensor. My S30 has an easier time, because the larger chip and the shorter focal length mean that there are considerably more stars available for platesolving.

But after a short time, Anja's S50 is also in the game.

After observing the comet, Carsten held on to the just rising globular cluster M4 in Scorpio and Anja finally captured the rising moon.

On the way back we saw that the whole thing took place at about +1.5° Celsius. We didn't even notice...

Additional infos

Comet classification: https://kosmos-os.de/der-komet-c2023-a3-tsuchinshan-atlas/

Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2025_R3_(PanSTARRS)