The Green Fourth ‘Star’ of Orion’s Belt
C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) makes for a temporary fourth green ‘star’ in the constellation Orion’s belt in this image comprising of 47 x 2 minute and 29 x 15 second exposures taken from Grand Mesa Observatory on 11/11/2020.
While you’ll need a decent pair of binoculars from a dark location to see Comet C/2020 M3 with your eye, in photographs it shows up quite nicely as it photobombs the constellation Orion. Discovered over this past summer by the ATLAS telescope system, C/2020 M3 is at its closest approach to Earth today, 11/14 at about 33 million miles away.
The data used in this setup “System 2C” is available from Grand Mesa Observatory’s legacy datatbase
Technical Info:
Captured and Processed by Terry Hancock and Tom Masterson
Total Integration time 1.5 hours
Location: GrandMesaObservatory.com Purdy Mesa, Colorado
Date of capture: November 11th 2020
Color RGGB 94 min, 47 x 120 sec
Color RGGB 7.25 min, 29 x 15 sec
Camera: QHY367 Pro C Full Frame Color CMOS
Gain 2850, Offset 76
Calibrated with Dark and Bias Frames
Optics: 135mm F2.0 Rokinon Lens
Image Acquisition software Maxim DL6
Pre Processed in Pixinsight
Post Processed in Photoshop
A nice write up of Comet C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) can be found here:
https://earthsky.org/space/comet-c-2020-m3-atlas-closest-to-earth-nov-14-2020
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