FIUCASE
Comet Lovejoy in motion
Comet Lovejoy (C2/2014) is currently brightening our night skies. From a dark location, it can be seen with binoculars moving North west in front of the constellation Orion. The image above is a series of images taken with the Stocker 0.61-meter telescope over the period of approximately 1 hour and stacked on top of one another. The comet images are the fuzzy blobs near the center of the image, and each image shows the progress of the comet (direction of red line). Comets are large objects, composed of rock and ice that are on orbits that take them in toward the Sun. Comet lovejoy is approaching perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) this month. As the comet makes it way through the inner solar system the nucleus heats up, outgassing and forming what astronomers call a Coma. What you see in the image is the coma of Lovejoy. Normally you can see two tails, an ion tail and a dust tail. In our images, we were unable to see the tail since a combination of bright sky and hazy weather made the sky brighter than the tail itself, thus we are unable to image it. However, what we could see was the progress of the comet as it moved among the background stars from lower right to upper left. All of the other points of light are stars. Each image is a 30 second exposure taken about 10 minutes apart. You can see the progress of the comet as it moves through the Solar system. At perihelion, the comet is moving at its highest speed (~82,000 mph for Lovejoy!). In the next few weeks we will try and image the tail for you. These images were taken through RGBL filters on the 0.61 telescope at the Stocker AstroScience Center by Dr. James Webb and Dr.Jose Parra and reduced by Dr. Webb.
Comet Lovejoy in motion
Comet Lovejoy (C2/2014) is currently brightening our night skies. From a dark location, it can be seen with binoculars moving North west in front of the constellation Orion. The image above is a series of images taken with the Stocker 0.61-meter telescope over the period of approximately 1 hour and stacked on top of one another. The comet images are the fuzzy blobs near the center of the image, and each image shows the progress of the comet (direction of red line). Comets are large objects, composed of rock and ice that are on orbits that take them in toward the Sun. Comet lovejoy is approaching perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) this month. As the comet makes it way through the inner solar system the nucleus heats up, outgassing and forming what astronomers call a Coma. What you see in the image is the coma of Lovejoy. Normally you can see two tails, an ion tail and a dust tail. In our images, we were unable to see the tail since a combination of bright sky and hazy weather made the sky brighter than the tail itself, thus we are unable to image it. However, what we could see was the progress of the comet as it moved among the background stars from lower right to upper left. All of the other points of light are stars. Each image is a 30 second exposure taken about 10 minutes apart. You can see the progress of the comet as it moves through the Solar system. At perihelion, the comet is moving at its highest speed (~82,000 mph for Lovejoy!). In the next few weeks we will try and image the tail for you. These images were taken through RGBL filters on the 0.61 telescope at the Stocker AstroScience Center by Dr. James Webb and Dr.Jose Parra and reduced by Dr. Webb.