Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Perseus (Per)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) cruises near the Double Cluster, Linda
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) cruises near the Double Cluster, Linda
Powered byPixInsight

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Description

When Sky Safari showed me that C/2017 T2 was near the Double Cluster and that both the clusters and the comet would fit in my field of view I knew I had to try even though I didn't know what I was doing.

I managed about 2 hours and 40 minutes of data before the comet started to go behind a tree. I tried using PixInsight's CometAlignment process and that aligned the comet beautifully but there was so little movement from frame to frame that the integrated comet master still had lots of stars. Even worse, because I rotated filters every 30 minutes there were two sets of stars. I'm still trying to figure out whether I can do anything to salvage that. If anyone has any insight I'd love to hear about it!

In the meantime I decided to make an animated gif that showed the movement of the comet over that period so this is an animation that combines all the filters in chronological order to show the movement. The comet was 1.6AU away from the sun so the movement is still fairly small but it is noticeable.

The comet is in the lower left quadrant, below the left of the two clusters above and to the right of the bright star in the lower left.

Here is a video about the original intent for this image and constructing the animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o11IuXH9SW4.

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