Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks: a careful look at its inner structures – 2 Mar. 2024
We managed to perform a careful wavelet analysis on our 2 Mar. images of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, getting a super view on the many features of this awesome object.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks shows dust waves close to its nuclear region: 2 Mar. 2024.
The image above comes from the sigma-clipping combination of seven, 180-second exposures, unfiltered and unguided, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST8-XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. It was gently processed via wavelet analysis, to extract the subtle, but real details in the inner coma. After this processing, dust waves from the nucleus are well visible, with a clear hint of a sprinkler-like feature.
We performed the same analysis on our wider field of view image, with the results below.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks processed via wavelet analysis: 2 mar. 2024.
The starting image comes from the sigma clipping combination of 6, 120-second unfiltered exposures, unguided, taken with the ARTEC250+Paramount ME+C3Pro61000EC robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy. It was used for the following wavelet analysis, as for the previous image. This larger view is, of course, in excellent agreement with the previous one and reveals plenty of details, also along the tail.
To conclude, we also performed a Larson-Sekanina rotational gradient on our high-resolution images, obtaining the following, resulting image, with plenty of features.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks processed via Larson-Sekanina gradient. 2 Mar. 2024.
We will continue to monitor this comet, weather permitting.
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