Friday 22 March 2013

2013-12-18: A new observation of the PanSTARRS Comet

The following figure shows together two observations of the comet on 2013-03-14 and 2013-03-18: 4 and 8 days after its perihelion pass. As this non-periodic comet is moving away from the Sun, in the images it can be observed that the cometary activity is being reduced. The nucleus, coma and tail glowing are fading as it can be seen in the visible and false colour images.


The third column of images show the image after application of a Larsen-Sekanina filter (Sekanina Z., Larson S. M., 1984. The Astronomical Journal 89,571.). It is a rotational gradient filter that allows to observe fine morphological structures around the comet. So, the morphological changes in the nucleus, the coma and the tail become quite evident. Although there is also a change in perspective as the coment is moving away, comparing the images it can be observed an activity reduction in the extension and density of the tail, the size of the coma and the fine jets emerging for the nucleus.




Friday 15 March 2013

2013-03-14: Pan-STARRS Comet from Madrid

Today, as in the previous days, the cloud coverage in Madrid difficulted seriously the observation of the comet. However, few holes opened at last time allowing to capture few pictures of the comet.

The following picture has been generated stacking 15 images captured on 2013-03-14T19:14 UTC with a DSLR Canon EOS 60Da through a 20 cm SCT.


The same picture shown in HDR shows very well the nucleus of the comet together with the dust tail and other glowing structures.

Thursday 14 March 2013

2013-03-12: First look to the Pas-STARRS Comet from ESAC

Although the weather was incredibly bad, few moments before the comet went below the horizon, the sky opened a small window and I "catched it". The following image is a stack of 10 pictures of the comet.

 

 The following image has been produced  stacking 10 pictures of the comet.


The sequence of images is in this video: