Comet 2017T2 PanSTARRS on Jun 9, 2020


Date & Time: Jun 9 2020, from 20:43 to 21:39 JST(+0900)
Composed 12 shots with 5 minutes exposed
Optical: VIXEN 20cm(7.9") VISAC with conversion lens (f=1278mm, F6.4)
with BaaderPlanetarium Moon&Skyglow filter
Auto-guided with TAKAHASHI EM-200 Equatorial & Lacerta M-GEN
Digital Camera: Nikon D810A
Location: Hitachi-oota city, Ibaraki pref.

Camera Settings: Recording Format...14bit CCD-RAW, converted to 16bit TIFF(7360×4912)
Device Size...FX format(36×24mm)
Sensitivity...ISO4000, White Balance...Daylight



Comet C/2017T2 PanSTARRS & Colliding galaxy pair Arp299



I captured the comet 2017T2 PanSTARRS about one and a half months later from my previous observation. During the time, the comet has traveled in the northern skies from Camelopardalis to Ursa Major. In that day the comet could be observed in higher evening northwest skies, positioned in the ladle of the Big Dipper, about 4.5 degrees southeast from alpha-UMa. The comet has almost the same coma brightness of 8th magnitude with that in the end of Apr 2020, and a dimmed dust tail with a length over 20 arc minutes stretched in northwest direction.
In that day, I could detect the comet having a rendez-vous with a minor colliding galaxy pair of Arp299 (NGC3690) at only 16 arc minutes WSW from the comet. The second image shows you the rare approach by composing four shots on the basis of star positions.
  The 1st image has been cropped with an equivalent focal length of 1600mm: View angle: 1.28×0.85°


2019Y4 ATLAS on Mar 20, 2020
2017T2 PanSTARRS on Apr 25, 2020

Copyright(c) 2020 by Naoyuki Kurita, All rights reserved.
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