Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4
Comet in Cepheus
For May 22, 2013

Uploaded 5/22/13

 
 On May 27th the Earth will pass through the orbital plane of the comet, making the sun ward spike we have been starting to see for weeks at its best. But this morning was the very last day you could get barely 30 minutes of dark sky to image the comet because of the nearly full moon. After today, its all over! So I was out this morning taking my last ever shot of the comet with its amazing anti tail clearly seen here as the massive sun ward spike pointing to the left in this set of images. A short fan tail of the normal type points to the right. Thats all most comet have, even at orbital plane crossing, but this object is very special. The comet is currently around 7.5th magnitude in Cepheus very near the north celestial pole making imaging challenging so close to Polaris. This set was tracked on the comets head and thus the stars a trailed slightly from the comets motion through them. This is a combined exposure of 24 minutes with the 80mm Stellarvue APO from Payson. Good bye Panstarrs, you went out with a bang!
Conventional image, the field here is 4 degrees wide! Select an image size for a larger view: 1290 x 960 1600 x 1200
Negative presentation to show the tails better Select an image size for a larger view: 1290 x 960 1600 x 1200
Color mapped to show the huge width and length of the tails Select an image size for a larger view: 1290 x 960 1600 x 1200
Lens: Stellarvue SV80s Platform: Televue GEM Exposure: 24m total Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 7/10, Transparency 8/10 Outside Temperature: 42F Processing Tools: Maxim DSLR, Photoshop CS2 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS