Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) - A moving comet, competing with satellites
At 51 latitude, summer nights don’t really get dark, at least not astronomically dark, so it’s been a while since I got the scopes out (To be cynical, with the new LED street lights they’ve installed in the neighbourhood, it will never get astronomically dark here anymore ). But with this special object brushing through our neighbouring space, I wanted to give it a try anyway
This is a record breaking comet, shining similarity like comet Hale-Bopp, inbound from the very distant Oort-cloud, only discovered in 2017, orbiting our sun over many thousands, if not millions of years. It will have it’s closest approach to earth at 1.8 AU (270 million km) on 14 July 2022
Comet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2017_K2_(PanSTARRS)This comet doesn’t get very high above the horizon, roughly 20-30 degrees in the south for me, right in the spot where I’ve got neighbouring trees reaching nearly 45 degrees high, and whatever piece of sky is left, is lit up by a LED flood light, swamping an adjacent parking lot of a motorcycle garage (that’s empty, all closed up, so no clue why they need to mess up the pristine dark sky)
But anyway, a short series of subs, resulting in 2 images spanning 2 days, just enough to see the comet and a glimpse of its tail, and its movement over the days as an animated GIF. Tracking on the stars.
TS94, EQ6-R, ASI2600MC
Photons: Gain 100/-10c 180s 8x (20220628) 8x (20220629)
PixInsight, Photoshop (animated GIF)
First time I chase a comet, these objects move fast. My first image with an integration time spanning 2 hours had the comet all smeared out. So, integrating just a stack of 30 minutes maximum each time. In spite of being careful in selecting the subs, after processing, I noticed that each image still had a faint satellite streak across it. Even at 180s it seems to become more and more difficult to not have the subs photobombed by a streaking satellite …
Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭
Follow me @astrowaut
Comments