Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto: an image (13 Feb. 2019)
On the night of its closest approach to the Earth, we managed to observe comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto again, under good sky conditions. We detected its faint ion tail. Here it is our image for you.
Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto: 13 Feb. 2019
The image above comes from the sigma clip combination of 10, 180-seconds exposures, unfiltered, remotely collected with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy. The robotic telescope tracked the apparent motion of comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto, so stars left trails on the background. The image scale is 1.8″/pixel.
A ion tail is easily detected on the SE (upper left) direction. At the imaging time, comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto was at about 45 millions of km from our planet and likely at its peak in brightness (mag 6.5/7).
We will offer a live,online view of this comet on 13 Feb. 2019: join us!
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