Comet C/2012 K5 (Linear): a Christmas’ gift
Comet C/2012 K5. 20 Dec. 2012, 01:40 UT
While Christmas is definitely in the air, comet C/2012 K5 is putting a nice show over there. Nothing bright, unfortunately, but something you can still enjoy with a small telescope or image with a digital camera and its ordinary lenses.
This comet was discovered on 28 May 2012 by the Linear automated survey, New Mexico (USA). It is getting a bit closer to the Earth and will reach a minimum distance of about 45 millions of km by the end of the year, reaching mag. 8 or so.
The image above was remotely captured with the PlaneWave 17 robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope: eight frames, each integrated for 300 seconds, were averaged, while the Paramount ME tracked the apparent motion of the comet.
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