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This 11th
magnitude object lies in Virgo just east of the "Bowl"
in an area much less dense in galaxies. This is a new object,
recently discovered and little is available on this object at
this time. It was discovered on this April 16th, and had apparently
just had an outburst - the day before it was fainter than 20th
magnitude! The comet continues to brighten and enlarge slowly.
Visually, I was not able to even glimpse this object in a 16mm
Nagler eyepiece with the 8", however its presence was confirmed
with a 1 minute exposure. This object is moving slowly and showed
only slight trailing in this 30 min shot. The short stubby fan
tail was totally unexpected for such a faint comet!
Since the comets
orbital elements were not yet available in Megastar from the
IAU, I used the chart found on skyhound.com comets section. South
is up here, and there are numerous faint galaxies in this field.
In the lower left corner a beautiful line of three small galaxies
can be seen. The brightest at the top is IC871, which is 14.2
magnitude and an Sb type spiral. Just below right is IC873, a
15.3rd magnitude object of unknown class. And finally the small
yellow spiral to its lower right is IC876, at 14.9th magnitude
classified as a type Sa spiral. I think you can actually see
some spiral appearance here.
The interesting
trio of colored stars at the top left of the frame are 6.6 magnitude
type A white star (center), and to its right is a 6.9 magnitude
type K2, and to the left of the A star is 7.9 magnitude type
K0 star.
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