La Cañada Observatory, is an initiative by Juan Lacruz, the observatory started astrometric operations in the summer of 2002, it is registered as station J87 in the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union.

The Observatory also participates in the studies on minor bodies promoted by the Group on Meteorites, Minor Bodies, and Planetary Sciences of the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC-IEEC).



Monday, February 23, 2009

C/2007 N3 Lulin and 29/P

Bright comet C/200 N3 Lulin, fast moving at 12"/min.
This is a stack of seven images on the comet movement.
Due to the particular geometry of the Sun-Comet-Earth we see the straight gas tail to the South East (bottom left) in contrast with the many jets in the opposite direction North West (Top right).
(c) 2007 Feb 21 La Cañada J.Lacruz

Fascinating centaur object 29/P comet after one of the frequent outburst it undergoes at an Helio centric distance of about 5 Astronomical units.
To the right a Larson Sekanina filtering (just a radial shift of 0.5 pixels) to better show the shell structures.
(c) 2007 Feb 21 La Cañada J.lacruz
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 23, 2009 at 11:56 PM

    Tonight comet Lulin passes through its perihelion at 0.41 AU.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Juan LacruzFebruary 24, 2009 at 12:49 PM

    According to the MPC the comet passed the perihelion on T 2009 Jan. 10.6396 TT and now approaches the shortest range to the Earth.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 24, 2009 at 11:17 PM

    then we are talking about its perigeon?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Juan LacruzFebruary 25, 2009 at 2:41 PM

    I don't know if the word perigeon applies to an object which doesn't orbit the Earth, but yes, comet 2007 N3 Lulin was approaching the Earth and has just (last night?) passed the point of shortest distance to us. It is now heading the outer Solar System. The comet is not periodic with an eccentrity close to 1 (hyperbolic) it will not return or it will but we won't see it (many thousand years). The comet shouldn't currently be a difficult target in a sensitive wide field camera, well located in the southern sky (integrated mag about 6). Visit HeavensAbove site to get a localization chart, binoculars would be enough to have a glimpse at it before it dims plunging in the deepths of the Solar System.

    Kind regards

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