Comet C/2013 UQ4 Catalina: a five day survey
Comet C/2013 UQ4 Catalina: compared views from 9, 10, 11, 12 and almost 13 July 2014
After five nights of observations in a row, we managed again to put together all the images we have of comet C/2013 UQ4 Catalina, showing how this comet evolved from 9 to 13 of July 2014. The Moon was a strong limiting factor on both the last two nights.
Each image above was taken with the 17″ robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope. All have a scale of 1.26″/pixel and have North on the right, East on the top. The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the object and all the images were combined via a median technique to remove the trails of the background stars as much as possible. This way, it is possible to better appreciate the morphology of the comet and its dusty coma.
The residuals of the trails show different directions, showing how the direction of motion of C/2013 UQ4 changed with the geometry of the view (involving the relative positions of the comet, the Earth-observer and the Sun).
From left to right: 9, 10, 11, 12 and late 12 July 2014.
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