Comet 174P/Echeclus outburst: a new image (27 Sept. 2016)

After our previous visits, made soon after the outburst was discovered in August, at Virtual Telescope we imaged comet 174P/Echeclus exactly one month after the outburst detection. And it was a rewarding sight.

Comet 174P/Echeclus outburst: 27 Sept. 2016

Comet 174P/Echeclus outburst: 27 Sept. 2016

Despite the weather was not perfect, with a relatively hazy sky, and the target was still rising, a bit far from its culmination, we slewed our “Elena”, 17-inches robotic telescope to this faint object, collecting several images.

The one above comes from the average of six, 300 seconds  exposures,remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The coma is at least 70 arc-minutes large, as visible in the negative palette image. This is almost 2x larger than from our previous observations earlier this month.

Weather permitting, we will continue observing this intriguing target.

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