Comet Linear 252P
in the morning sky
April 2, 2016

 
 This
            comet passed very close to the Earth a week ago, and now is in
            a moon free sky in Serpens. I was just able to glimpse this object
            naked eye, putting its magnitude near 6 or so. The very faint
            fan tail points to the left here, but is very tenuous. I used
            the six inch Astrograph because this comet is so huge, the field
            of the 10" would have been too close! A very rich star field
            and deep cyan color highlights this image. An interesting feature
            of this comet is that the blue image was brighter than the green
            one.


            
 Click
            here for a larger 1290 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 3 x2 degrees


Lens:  Meade 622 Cometracker Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Camera: SBIG ST10XME
Exposure:  39m
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  4/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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