Comet 46P Wirtanen - single frame

[steppenwolf]

I was beginning to wonder if I would ever observe or capture an image of this object as the cloud gods have not been kind recently but I managed to do both on 13th December. No prize-winner as it is only a single unguided 30 second luminance exposure. Nice to have as a memento of the event though especially as I had to install the latest version of Cartes du Ciel and the comet ephemerides to get near it and even then, the position was incorrectly marked so I had to search for it - although in truth, this is all part of the fun! Image binned 4x4 with my QSI 683 WSG and Esprit 150 ED Pro.

Comet 46P Wirtanen

Comet location at capture time

[PhotoGav]

Congratulations Steve, you managed to get something! Pretty decent pic too. What field of view does your system give? Amazing to think that this 1km lump is producing a coma of about 50 arcmin. Calculations make that about 165,000km or 13 Earth diameters of coma!! I look forward to the meteor shower generated by the Earth passing through all the crud that 46P leaves behind!!

[steppenwolf]

44 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

What field of view does your system give? Amazing to think that this 1km lump is producing a coma of about 50 arcmin.

The field of view of this combo. is 57'5' x 43.4'. Comets are indeed amazing objects, it is no wonder that mankind/womankind has marvelled at them over the ages! I still remember the thrill of capturing comet 17P Holmes in December of 2007 when its halo went berserk totally unexpectedly!

[bob-c]

Nice cap Steve.

Bob.