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

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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.

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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 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS