Record making comet P2016 BA14 Panstarrs: new images and a spectacular video (20 Mar. 2016)
Record making comet P2016 BA14 Panstarrs: 20 Mar. 2016
*** See comet P/2016 BA14 Panstarrs LIVE from your very own device ***
While comet P/2016 BA14 Panstarrs is getting closer and closer, at Virtual Telescope we are preparing our double live, online session to track in in real time, on the web. Last night we imaged the comet again and, of course, it was brighter (mag. about 13.1) and apparently faster than in the previous visits.
The image above is the median combination of five, 120-seconds unfiltered exposure, 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 object (44″/min) during the exposures. The comet looks stellar at first glance. At the imaging time, a 93.5% extremely bright Moon was high in the sky, 30 deg. away from the target. Comet P/2016 BA14 was at 4.2 millions of km from us.
Doing careful processing, it is possible to see a coma, as apparent in the negatove palette image below
Comet P/2016 BA14: a faint coma is visible – 20 Mar. 2016
*** See comet P/2016 BA14 Panstarrs LIVE from your very own device ***
The image below is a single, 240-seconds unfiltered exposure, 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 object (44″/min) during the exposures. At the imaging time, a 93.5% extremely bright Moon was high in the sky, 30 deg away from the target.
Record making comet P2016 BA14 Panstarrs: 20 Mar. 2016
We also captured 182 frames from 19:52 to 20:42 UT, each integrated for 10 seconds, and used them to make the awesome movie below (note: the image below has North up and east on the left):
The motion seen there is 330X the real one.
*** See comet P/2016 BA14 Panstarrs LIVE from your very own device ***
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