Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy: a new mosaic (09 Feb. 2015)
Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy: 09 Feb. 2015
After more than one week of clouds and heavy rain, at Virtual Telescope we could image comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy again, on its way back to the outer Solar System. There was an excellent transparency, but a very strong wind, with a resulting poor seeing.
The image above comes from the average of six, 120-seconds unfiltered exposures, remotely collected with the PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked at the apparent rate of the comet. Two adjacent portions of the sky were imaged, later carefully superimposed, to cover a larger field of view. We used a 3×3 binning, providing the highest sensibility to light, still with a 1.8″/pixel, good resolution for a detailed view. As said, seeing was quite poor
We provide also a negative palette, making easier to see the complex pattern of the tail.
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