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, September 13, 2010

103P/Hartley 2010 Sept 13

The following picture is a set of 15 images of 2 min exposure each stacked on the comet's movement. The field size is about 27 arc min.

In this cropped and zoomed detail the coma is about 2 arc min wide, if we force the contrast the coma grows to double this size, see Hergenrother's post introducing comet Hartley 2

The coma profile above the background level (thin red line) is about 4 arc minutes wide.

A false colour rendition.

Comet Hartley 2 in its current (2010) return will pass at only 0.12 AU from Earth on October the 20th.

The Deep impact spacecraft will approach 103P Hartley at just 1000 Km on November the 4th.

References :
Gary Kronk's Cometography, Wiki, BAA
Publicado por en
Etiquetas: ,