Comet 46P/Wirtanen
in the evening sky
December 8, 2018

 
 This
            4.3 magnitude comet is currently naked eye in Eridanus on the
            meridian around 9pm local time. It is getting quite large, and
            the coma will no longer fit in the 10 inch newtonian. Here, I
            used the 80mm f/6 Stellarvue APO and an f/4.3 Televue coma corrector.
            The field is about 2.5 degrees wide. A surprising number of faint
            galaxies appear in this field as well. Exposures totally just
            over 100 minutes were combined using a brand new tecnique which
            easily separates the trailed background stars from the stationary
            comet. Only by using this method did the dim gas tail become
            evident, not visible using either average or median combine methods.
 

            
 Click
            here for a larger 1400 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 3 x2 degrees


Lens:  10" f/3.9 Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200
Camera: SBIG ST10xme
Exposure:  100m
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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