Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas fragmentation: further observations – 14 Apr. 2020

After one rainy night, we are back on comet C/2014 Y4 Atlas, seeing how its evolved.  Several fragments are still visible in the image below.

C/2019 Y4 Atlas and its fragments. 14 Apr. 2020

C/2019 Y4 Atlas and its fragments. 14 Apr. 2020

The image above comes from the average of 46, 60-seconds exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope. The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the comet and images were stacked using the orbit of the comet, to provide the best accuracy. Image scale is 0.63″/pixel. Unsharp masking filtering was carefully performed to enhance subtle details in the inner coma: we likely see four pieces/condensations, as we reported recently.

We have much more data from all the past nights and we are processing them, to provide a detailed analysis, but we wanted to share right away this latest, amazing view of comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas. Here you can find all our observations of this comet.

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