C/2019 Y4 Atlas, a close-up image (24 Mar. 2020)

We present a new image of comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas, lookingbrighter and brighter. Le’s hope it will amaze us next months.

Comet C/2019 Y4 (Atlas): 24 Mar. 2020

Comet C/2019 Y4 (Atlas): 24 Mar. 2020

The image above comes from the average of 16, 300-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 of the comet, so stars left trails on the background. The image scale is 1.2″/pixel.

As we can see, the comet developed a lot in the last ~30 days following our previous image: now, C/2019 Y4 Atlas shows a nice tail in the close-up image above.

This comet could be connected to the Great Comet C/1844 Y1, perhaps two fragments of the same parent body. We will see what will happen  in the next weeks and will learn if the comet will perform well next May, despite it will be at low solar elongation around the expected peak in brightness.

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