Caldwell 7 & Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Here's a wide field of view from the 10th April showing Caldwell 7 (NGC 2403) and Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) together in Camelopardalis. The small fuzzy on the right is NGC 2366, a barred irregular dwarf galaxy. think I've also picked up a little IFN below the comet, here was some light cloud scudding through that night but the sigma clip should have removed it. I'll check later whether it's real. My main goal was to produce an animation of the comet's motion but I noticed the galaxies and famed the shot accordingly.

This was an hour of data (2 minute subs) with the Samyang 135mm f2 and Canon 6d, heavily cropped.

Here's a 100% crop of the often overlooked Caldwell 7.

And here's a 100% crop of the comet, which appears to show the fragmentation.

Hope you like them. I'd post up the animation but YouTube has killed the quality, does anyone know of a better place to host it please?

[Scooot]

They’re great, lovely capture.  

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I've confirmed the patch of IFN by the comet is real, there is a matching structure on the Digitised Sky Survey. Here's a hard stretch of the DSS image.

I also found a couple other objects of interest in frame.

The 100% crop of NGC 2366 shows a strikingly blue blob. This is a gigantic star forming region containing two super star clusters and one of the brightest stars known, a luminous blue variable NGC 2363-V1. It's about 6 million times brighter than the Sun. NGC 2366 is a small galaxy but it's full of bright stars as it's interacting with another irregular dwarf, just visible in as a smear above the star forming region.

Here's a much closer image of NGC 2366, at 2,500mm focal length, confirming the star forming region shows up blue in RGB (bright stars + reflection nebulosity + OII overwhelming the Ha signal?). And here's the Hubble image:

Caldwell 7 also has some huge star forming regions. One of them is 83 times the size of the Orion Nebula and would be bright enough to cast shadows if it was at the same distance.

[happy-kat]

Very interesting post and pictures. Quite a collection of interesting comet captures you've built. The wide field take adds so much more. Will you be adding to your web pages?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks, glad you like them.

6 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Will you be adding to your web pages?

Yes, I'm planning to update the website much more regularly, I did a write-up on Simeis 147 the other day. With the lockdown I'm hoping to put together a few entertainment/educational pieces for sharing, there are lots of people struggling with home schooling at the moment who might appreciate a distraction. I'm talking to a teacher so I may be able to tie a few small things in with the curriculum. It's also fun for me as it gets me digging into my images and other sources in more depth. C\2019 Y4 will be a subject, I also have an animation and a fiend of mine took a closer image with a scope which complements the widefield stuff.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Had a quick look on Pretty Deep Maps and think I've also caught a mag 18.5 Quasar at z3.04, which is about 11.6 billion light years away (lookback time). Pretty good for a DSLR and camera lens.