Comet 32P/Comas Solà: an image (18 Feb. 2015)
Among the comets visible this time of the year, there is comet 32P/Comas Solà, discovered in 1926 by Josep Comas Solà, Barcelona. Since then, it has been observed at every return, every ~8.5 years.
The last perihelion was last Oct. 2014, so it is already on its way back to the our Solar System. It is not a bright object, but always interesting, as always with comets.
The image above comes from the average of ten, 300-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. The image scale is 1.2″/pixel, provided by the 2×2 binning option of the CCD detector.
All around there are several fuzzy objects, they are galaxies in the same field of view, placed between Leo and Coma Berenices.
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