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There has
never been a comet in the decades of comet imaging I have done
that is quite like comet Panstarrs. A persistent sun ward pointing
spike, or "Anti-Tail" has been a dominant feature of
this object, now faded to around magnitude 7.3 and very near
the pole in Cepheus. As you can see in the image below, the comet
has a basic dust fan pointing to the upper left, and a very peculiar
spike pointing straight down. This is the Anti-Tail and is very
rare in comets in general because of the unique geometry required
to see them.
The second image
is Comet Lemmon now very low in the eastern sky, around 10 degrees
up here - and brighter at around 5.5 magnitude. While not visible
to the naked eye, this and comet Panstarrs are easily seen in
the 11x80 binoculars and it was fun to rapidly sweep back and
forth between the two objects and compare them. No two comets
are ever alike exactly, but Lemmon does look more typical with
a short broad fan pointing to around 2:00 here and the gas tail
nearly at noon.
Both images are
1 minute sub frames stacked to register the comet, not the stars
which in both images can be seen as short trails from the comets
motion.
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