Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4
Comet in Ursa Minor
For May 27, 2013

Uploaded 5/28/13

 

            
 On May 27th,
            a remarkable event occurred - The Earth passed into the orbital
            plane of comet Panstarrs. Normally, this is non-event, for most
            comets the amount of dust in the orbital plane scattered about
            by the comets head is so small that only very rarely do we see
            the edge on dust plane projected on to the sun ward side of the
            comet. But Panstarrs was one of the most dusty comets I have
            ever seen. Even a month away from crossing, there were signs
            of a good potential for large amounts of dust to be following
            the comet around the sun. On the date of crossing, with only
            one hour of darkness after the full moon, the comet displayed
            a monster anti tail, some reports were it was over 16 degrees
            long! This was unprecedented. I personally had never seen anything
            like this in over 35 years of comet imaging and viewing. In the
            binoculars, this 8th magnitude faint smudge was very oblong in
            shape, and I could spot at least 6 degrees of anti tail in the
            9x 63 binoculars.

            
When I imaged the
            field with both 100mm and 200mm settings on the zoom lens, the
            results showed that I had to radically offset the head in the
            field to get the entire tail to fit. Plenty of short test exposures
            led to putting the comet right in the upper right corner of both
            frames. The tail was full frame diagonally in both shots, 8 degrees
            for the 200mm and yes - nearly 15 degrees for the 100mm shot!
            Here are the images both in conventional and contrast stretched
            negative format to show you what we obtained.



            
Conventional image, 100mm. the field here
is 12 degrees wide, and 15 degrees
diagonally. That bright star is Polaris
and the deep sky object is NGC188 just
below center, a star cluster.
Select an image size for a larger view:

1290 x 960

1600 x 1200



            
Negative presentation to show the 
tails better. It goes right off the frame to the 
lower left. The normal fan tail is to the upper
right of the coma.
Select an image size for a larger view:

1290 x 960

1600 x 1200



            
200mm close up with a 6 degree wide field
and 8 degrees diagonal field.  Polaris is still
to the upper left - I put it in the frame AND
was able to still get the comets head right where
I wanted it.
Select an image size for a larger view:

1290 x 960

1600 x 1200



            
Negative presentation to show the 
tails better. The cluster is just out of the field.
Select an image size for a larger view:

1290 x 960

1600 x 1200


Lens:  Canon 100 - 400L
Platform:  Televue GEM
Exposure:  38m for 200, 30m for 100 total
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  47F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DSLR, Photoshop CS2

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