Comet 46P/Wirtanen is getting brighter: a new close-up image (28 Nov. 2018)
Comet 46P/Wirtanen is getting brighter and brighter, while it heads to its best visibility for us living in the Northern hemisphere. After many weeks of bad weather, we could observe it and we share here a close-up of the inner coma of comet Wirtanen.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen: 28 Nov. 2018
* NB: versione in Italiano qui *
The image above comes from the average of six, 180-seconds exposures, unfiltered, remotely collected with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at the Virtual Telescope Project. The robotic telescope tracked the apparent motion comet Wirtanen, so stars left trails on the background. The image scale is 1.2″/pixel.
This close-up shows the inner coma: images were carefully processed to preserve the visibility of the bright false nucleus. At the imaging time, the comet was only 25 degrees above the horizon. You can see our past images of the same object here.
We plan to follow comet 46P intensively and we will also share it live, online, soon, so stay tuned!
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