Comet Catalina US10
in the evening sky
Feb 11, 2016

 The comets twin tails have now nearly aligned. The dust component is the broad fan to the right of the coma, and the gas tail, now quite dilluted by dust is the ray shooting toward the lower right. It is a pale blue now. While no longer a naked eye object near mag 7, it can still be easily seen in my 9 x 60 binoculars. Here is a shot with the 10 inch for a total of 9 mins, with the camera set for a binning of 2 and consisting of three color frames combined.

 Click here for a larger 1024 sized image

Field here is about 3 x2 degrees
Lens: 10" f/3.9 Orion Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector Platform: Astrophysics AP1200 Camera: SBIG ST10XME Exposure: 54m Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 7/10, Transparency 8/10 Outside Temperature: 20F Processing Tools: Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS