Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) (Taras Prystavski)

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)

Red:
2020 Mar. 01.32 UT Dia.=&2.6' Tail=&3.2' in PA 191 deg
Exposure = 1*30 sec; 1.01"/px

Green
2020 Mar. 01.24 UT Dia.=&4.8'
Exposure = 1*30 sec; 1.01"/px

Red:
2020 Apr. 17.17 UT Dia.=&4.1' Tail=&27' in PA 83 deg
Exposure = 1*30 sec; 1.01"/px

Green
2020 Apr. 17.20 UT Dia.=&6.2' Tail=&23' in PA 83 deg
Exposure = 1*30 sec; 1.01"/px

1.2-m f/2.4 Schmidt
Zwicky Transient Facility, I41 (Palomar Observatory, California, USA)
Image credit: IRSA/Caltech/NASA

A small work based on images of Zwicky Transient Facility survey.
Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) was discovered on Dec. 28, 2019. Early observations suggested
that comet could become visible to the naked eye somewhere around its perihelion passage
on May 31, 2020 peaking at ~0 mag. On Apr. 3, Artyom Novichonok via comets-ml group
announced about the stagnating of cometary activity based on Stanislav Korotkiy observations. Later on Apr. 6, astronomers Quanzhi Ye (U. Maryland) and Qicheng Zhang (Caltech) also reported, on The Astronomer's Telegram, the possible disintegration of comet C/2019 Y4, which was confirmed by later observations. Comet has split into at least 4 fragments (HST identified up to 30 pieces), soon started to fade and did not reach naked eye visibility.
For this presentation were used ZTF images from Mar. 1, 2020, when the comet looked healthy and from Apr. 17, 2020, when the fragmentation was already obvious. Brigthness was measured by means of a differential photometry technique in both r and g-bands.
Reference APASS star catalog was used and a range of aperture radii from 2" to 20" of the Aperture Photometry Tool. Comet demonstrates drastic changes in appearance and also in photometric behavior as a result of fragmentation.

Comet observations 2020
Zwicky Transient Facility images

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5785236
PixInsight job	2CMNFCYLEIZP7O7DJFQZSMIYN72E0Y9X
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	06h17m33s.83
RA (top/left)	06h19m45s.29
RA (top/right)	06h16m08s.74
RA (bottom/right)	06h15m23s.100
RA (bottom/left)	06h18m53s.35

Dec (center)	+65°31′18″.8
Dec (top/left)	+65°52′05″.2
Dec (top/right)	+65°54′31″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	+65°10′34″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+65°07′59″.1

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):