Carl Kwadrat
Comet Leonard C/2021-A1
The Comet Leonard was discovered in January 2021 by Gregory Leonard of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon Sky Center’s Santa Catalina Infrared Observatory near Tucson, AZ using its 1.5 meter (60 inch) diameter telescope. Comet Leonard was at its brightest as viewed from Earth during the month of December 2021. The closest approach to the Earth at a distance of 21 million miles occurred on December 12, 2021. The comet made its closest approach to the Sun on January 3, 2022. The comet’s orbital track around the Sun provided an extra gravitational force “sling shot” impulse to speed it up and place it on a hyperbolic orbit with an escape velocity that will allow it to completely escape the solar system into interstellar space. It will never to be seen again.
The colors of Comet Leonard in the Flickr close-up photo reveal some of the chemical makeup of its body. While the comet was in the inner part of the solar system, the surface of the comet (its nucleus) heated up and the frozen materials started to outgas from its surface, thus forming the long comet tail visible in the Flickr photo. The nucleus, which is the solid body of the comet, is enshrouded in a green color halo (coma) in the Flickr photo. The green color of the rarified atmosphere surrounding the nucleus is indicative of the presence of diatomic carbon and cyanogen gas being liberated from the frozen surface due to the heat of the Sun. Other common chemicals that are present in the constitution of comets are water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethanol, ethane, long chain hydrocarbons, amino acid, and organic molecules.
The comet’s tail is made of dust particles and ionized atoms and molecules. The tail has a variable length depending on the comets distance from the Sun. As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the increasing heat vaporizes more and more gas which makes the tail longer and longer. The vaporized gases give the comet an atmosphere which changes in density as a function of its distance from the Sun. The strong solar wind (streams of charged particles) from the Sun causes the tail to point in the opposite direction to the Sun. This is the case whether comet is approaching or receding from the Sun. The magnetic fields of the solar winds can cause two tails to appear since ionized atoms and molecules can be forcefully separated from the dusty portion and move is slightly different direction. The tail is rarified mixture of dust and gas as observed by the fact that you can easily see the distant stars through it in the Flickr photo.
An iTelescope hosted PlaneWave CDK20 (20 inch diameter) astrograph was used to capture the imaging data for the Comet Leonard shown in the Flickr photo. The astrograph is located at iTelescope’s Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. The PlaneWave CDK20 astrograph used three wideband color filters (Red, Green, and Blue) that were inserted between the telescope and the camera to acquire the complete set of imaging data used to make the final true color data of my Flickr photo.
The total exposure time taken with the red, green, and blue wideband filters was 20 minutes. 160 megabytes of calibrated data was downloaded to my home PC via the Internet for processing. The following software was used to process the raw data: PixInsight, Photoshop 2021, Topaz Denoise AI, and Topaz Sharpen AI.
Comet Leonard C/2021-A1
The Comet Leonard was discovered in January 2021 by Gregory Leonard of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon Sky Center’s Santa Catalina Infrared Observatory near Tucson, AZ using its 1.5 meter (60 inch) diameter telescope. Comet Leonard was at its brightest as viewed from Earth during the month of December 2021. The closest approach to the Earth at a distance of 21 million miles occurred on December 12, 2021. The comet made its closest approach to the Sun on January 3, 2022. The comet’s orbital track around the Sun provided an extra gravitational force “sling shot” impulse to speed it up and place it on a hyperbolic orbit with an escape velocity that will allow it to completely escape the solar system into interstellar space. It will never to be seen again.
The colors of Comet Leonard in the Flickr close-up photo reveal some of the chemical makeup of its body. While the comet was in the inner part of the solar system, the surface of the comet (its nucleus) heated up and the frozen materials started to outgas from its surface, thus forming the long comet tail visible in the Flickr photo. The nucleus, which is the solid body of the comet, is enshrouded in a green color halo (coma) in the Flickr photo. The green color of the rarified atmosphere surrounding the nucleus is indicative of the presence of diatomic carbon and cyanogen gas being liberated from the frozen surface due to the heat of the Sun. Other common chemicals that are present in the constitution of comets are water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethanol, ethane, long chain hydrocarbons, amino acid, and organic molecules.
The comet’s tail is made of dust particles and ionized atoms and molecules. The tail has a variable length depending on the comets distance from the Sun. As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the increasing heat vaporizes more and more gas which makes the tail longer and longer. The vaporized gases give the comet an atmosphere which changes in density as a function of its distance from the Sun. The strong solar wind (streams of charged particles) from the Sun causes the tail to point in the opposite direction to the Sun. This is the case whether comet is approaching or receding from the Sun. The magnetic fields of the solar winds can cause two tails to appear since ionized atoms and molecules can be forcefully separated from the dusty portion and move is slightly different direction. The tail is rarified mixture of dust and gas as observed by the fact that you can easily see the distant stars through it in the Flickr photo.
An iTelescope hosted PlaneWave CDK20 (20 inch diameter) astrograph was used to capture the imaging data for the Comet Leonard shown in the Flickr photo. The astrograph is located at iTelescope’s Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. The PlaneWave CDK20 astrograph used three wideband color filters (Red, Green, and Blue) that were inserted between the telescope and the camera to acquire the complete set of imaging data used to make the final true color data of my Flickr photo.
The total exposure time taken with the red, green, and blue wideband filters was 20 minutes. 160 megabytes of calibrated data was downloaded to my home PC via the Internet for processing. The following software was used to process the raw data: PixInsight, Photoshop 2021, Topaz Denoise AI, and Topaz Sharpen AI.