Acquisition Data

2/19/2009  Chino Valley... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

Lum    4 min. (4 x 1 min. bin 2x2)

Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.)  Captured at 7.0 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 18.2 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Filters

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin and Noel Carboni's actions.

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine sub exposures.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching.

Comment

North is to the top.

Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin), also known as Comet Lulin, is a non-periodic comet. It was discovered by Ye Quanzhi and Lin Chi-Sheng from Lulin Observatory. The comet's orbit is nearly in the same plane as the Earth, moving in the opposite direction and displays a rare anti-tail. This second tail isn't really a tail, but an illusion, caused by illuminated trailing dust. This dust becomes visible, as a tail, when the Earth crosses the comet's orbital plane with the sunlight illuminating the dust at just the right angle. The long spiked shape is typical of comet anti-tails.

The bright light, in the upper left corner of the first image, is from the planet Saturn.