Comet 174P/Echeclus
in the Evening sky
December 15, 2017

 
 This
            normally obscure 18th magnitude comet has recently had a major
            outburst to magnitude 14 and shows gas and dust activity now,
            instead of a completely stellar appearing object. A suprise was
            the nice teal/green color that showed up in this hour long set
            of images as well. Perhaps there is more to come on this one,
            and it bears close watching. It is currently nearing the zenith
            in Aries. A dim asteroid is shown in the bottom labeled image
            which does not appear in the Cartes du Ciel atlas.
 

            
Standard
            image with the comet near center


            
 Click
            here for a larger 1400 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 1 degree



            
Inverted labeled image. Ive circled in red galaxies
ranging from 16 to 19th magnitude, and one in green - an unknown asteroid.

            
Click
            here for a larger 1400 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 1 degree


Lens:  10" f/3.9 Orion Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Camera: SBIG ST10XME
Exposure:  60m LRGB
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  3/10, Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  32F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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