Comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami fragmentation: an image (11 Feb. 2016)
Comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami, fragments a, b+e, c, d. 11 Feb.2015, 2016, 20:16 UT
At the end of 2015, an apparently new comet turned out to be comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami, with the bonus of an apparent fragment. On the following days, more fragments were discovered, making this comet of extreme interest, as it already was.
At Virtual Telescope weather has been a serious issue recently, so we could not do prompt observations of comet P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami. The first chance for us to look at this object was on 11 Feb., when the sky was clear for less than a couple of hours.
The image above comes from 16, 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 the apparent motion of the comet during the exposures.
Several fragments are visible, making the sight quite interesting. We plan to continue monitoring this comet.
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