APOD: Comet PanSTARRS is near the Edge (2018 Feb 16)

[APOD Robot]

Comet PanSTARRS is near the Edge

Explanation: The comet PanSTARRS, also known as the blue comet (C/2016 R2), really is near the lower left edge of this stunning, wide field view recorded on January 13. Spanning nearly 20 degrees on the sky, the cosmic landscape is explored by well-exposed and processed frames from a sensitive digital camera. It consists of colorful clouds and dusty dark nebulae otherwise too faint for your eye to see, though. At top right, the California Nebula (aka NGC 1499) does have a familiar shape. Its coastline is over 60 light-years long and lies some 1,500 light-years away. The nebula's pronounced reddish glow is from hydrogen atoms ionized by luminous blue star Xi Persei just below it. Near bottom center, the famous Pleiades star cluster is some 400 light-years distant and around 15 light-years across. Its spectacular blue color is due to the reflection of starlight by interstellar dust. In between are hot stars of the Perseus OB2 association and dusty, dark nebulae along the edge of the nearby, massive Taurus and Perseus molecular clouds. Emission from unusually abundant ionized carbon monoxide (CO+) molecules fluorescing in sunlight is largely responsible for the telltale blue tint of the remarkable comet's tail. The comet was about 17 light minutes from Earth.

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[Ann]

This is a very nice image. I particularly like how the Pleiades themselves almost mimic a comet. At least they look like they are plowing through a sea of dust on their way to "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning". They leave a wake of blue backwash behind them.

Very nice!

Ann

[Boomer12k]

Really nice shot... so much detail, and goings on...

What camera and "basic" equipment is she talking about???

:---[===] *

[heehaw]

At last a comet photo that puts a comet in its proper negligible place!

[jtflies]

Could be mistaken, but another comet, 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT, may also be visible is this image (to the right of phi Tauri, blue tinted, and superimposed on part of the dark nebulae in Taurus, roughly left of center).

[neufer]

Could be mistaken, but another comet, 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT, may also be visible is this image (to the right of phi Tauri, blue tinted, and superimposed on part of the dark nebulae in Taurus, roughly left of center).

• Possibly: https://in-the-sky.org/findercharts.php ... bjs=116984

<<54P/de Vico–Swift–NEAT is a periodic comet in the Solar System first discovered by Father Francesco de Vico (Rome, Italy) on August 23, 1844. It has become a lost comet several times after its discovery. The comet makes many close approaches to Jupiter.

Hervé Faye (Paris, France) computed the first elliptical orbit on September 16, 1844, and the orbital period as 5.46 years.

The comet was considered lost as subsequent predicted returns after 1844 were never observed.

Edward D. Swift (Echo Mountain, California, USA) rediscovered the comet on November 21, 1894. Adolf Berberich suggested the comet might be the same as de Vico's comet on the basis of the comet's location and direction of motion.

After 1894, the comet was considered lost again after the 1901 and 1907 returns remained unseen.
Third discovery (1965)

In 1963, Brian G. Marsden used a computer to link the 1844 and 1894 sightings and calculated a favourable return in 1965. The comet was subsequently recovered by Arnold Klemola (Yale-Columbia Southern Observatory, Argentina) on June 30, 1965, at magnitude 17.

In 1968 the comet passed close to Jupiter which increased the perihelion distance and orbital period, the magnitude dropped and the comet was not observed for subsequent predictions, in 1995 it was again considered lost.

The Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program rediscovered the comet on October 11, 2002. The LINEAR program (New Mexico) found several prediscovery images from October 4. It was confirmed as a return of comet 54P/de Vico-Swift by Kenji Muraoka (Kochi, Japan).

On August 17, 2009, comet 54P/de Vico–Swift–NEAT was recovered, while 2.3 AU from the Sun.>>

Code: Select all

Perihelion 	     2.14 AU
Semi-major axis 	3.76 AU
Eccentricity 	   0.43
Orbital period 	 7.313 years
Inclination 	    6.084°
Last perihelion 	November 28, 2009
Next perihelion 	April 15, 2017

Our wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradoma-tional gazebocroticon (the “Mamma Lujah” known to every schoolboy scandaller, be he Matty, Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk), autokinatonetically preprovided with a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process, (for the farmer, his son and their homely codes, known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can) receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypet-purpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past; type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance, since the days of Plooney and Colum-cellas when Giacinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation, all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidioti-cally, in fact, the sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophaz-ards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloo — menos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there’s scribings scrawled on eggs.

[yowsah]

Our wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradoma-tional gazebocroticon (the “Mamma Lujah” known to every schoolboy scandaller, be he Matty, Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk), autokinatonetically preprovided with a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process, (for the farmer, his son and their homely codes, known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can) receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypet-purpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past; type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance, since the days of Plooney and Colum-cellas when Giacinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation, all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidioti-cally, in fact, the sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophaz-ards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloo — menos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there’s scribings scrawled on eggs.

O.K. but who's doing the dying?

[jtflies]

Finnegan did the dying, probably.

[neufer]

Our wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradoma-tional gazebocroticon (the “Mamma Lujah” known to every schoolboy scandaller, be he Matty, Marky, Lukey or John-a-Donk), autokinatonetically preprovided with a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process, (for the farmer, his son and their homely codes, known as eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can) receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypet-purpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past; type by tope, letter from litter, word at ward, with sendence of sundance, since the days of Plooney and Colum-cellas when Giacinta, Pervenche and Margaret swayed over the all-too-ghoulish and illyrical and innumantic in our mutter nation, all, anastomosically assimilated and preteridentified paraidioti-cally, in fact, the sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One, as highly charged with electrons as hophaz-ards can effective it, may be there for you, Cockalooralooraloo — menos, when cup, platter and pot come piping hot, as sure as herself pits hen to paper and there’s scribings scrawled on eggs.

O.K. but who's doing the dying?

[b][size=150][color=#0000FF]Humphrey Childeric Eggeberth[/color][/size][/b]

---

The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watched them go by. She thought that in all her life she had never seen soldiers so uncertain on their feet: they were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him, so that the ground was soon covered with little heaps of men.

Then came the horses. Having four feet, these managed rather better than the foot-soldiers: but even they stumbled now and then; and it seemed to be a regular rule that, whenever a horse stumbled the rider fell off instantly. The confusion got worse every moment, and Alice was very glad to get out of the wood into an open place, where she found the White King seated on the ground, busily writing in his memorandum-book.

`I’ve sent them all!’ the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing Alice. `Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came through the wood?’

`Yes, I did,’ said Alice: `several thousand, I should think.’

`Four thousand two hundred and seven, that’s the exact number,’ the King said, referring to his book. `I couldn’t send all the horses, you know, because two of them are wanted in the game.’

[Joe Stieber]

Could be mistaken, but another comet, 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT, may also be visible is this image (to the right of phi Tauri, blue tinted, and superimposed on part of the dark nebulae in Taurus, roughly left of center).

Using SkyTools (with which I've successfully tracked down quite a number of comets), the blue patch you describe looks like Bernes 72, a diffuse nebula. It's about 1 deg NNW of Phi Tau. 54P would have been 2.5 deg NNW of Phi Tau at the time, outside the dark nebula, and I don't see any signs of this 19th magnitude comet in the APOD image. I looked at the "In The Sky" finder chart, but it offered little of the needed detail.

[neufer]

Could be mistaken, but another comet, 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT, may also be visible is this image (to the right of phi Tauri, blue tinted, and superimposed on part of the dark nebulae in Taurus, roughly left of center).

Using SkyTools (with which I've successfully tracked down quite a number of comets), the blue patch you describe looks like Bernes 72, a diffuse nebula. It's about 1 deg NNW of Phi Tau. 54P would have been 2.5 deg NNW of Phi Tau at the time, outside the dark nebula, and I don't see any signs of this 19th magnitude comet in the APOD image. I looked at the "In The Sky" finder chart, but it offered little of the needed detail.

• I vote for 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT:

https://in-the-sky.org/findercharts.php ... bjs=116984

[jtflies]

Thanks Joe and Art.
I defer to the experts, but the blue nebula about 1 deg from Phi Tau looks like LBN 782 also known as Cederblad 30.
See image by Jim Thommes http://www.jthommes.com/Astro/images/LB ... otated.jpg
And especially nice by S-J Park: https://www.astrobin.com/326174/0/?nc=user

[Joe Stieber]

Thanks Joe and Art.
I defer to the experts, but the blue nebula about 1 deg from Phi Tau looks like LBN 782 also known as Cederblad 30.
See image by Jim Thommes http://www.jthommes.com/Astro/images/LB ... otated.jpg
And especially nice by S-J Park: https://www.astrobin.com/326174/0/?nc=user

It would appear that SkyTools is using an obscure synonym as the designation for this object, Bernes 72, rather than LBN 782 or Ced 30. Looking at the SkyTools chart and the linked images, the nebula is in the same place in all three.

I also followed Neufer's additional link to In-The-Sky, and although it was lacking the level of detail, I was able to match it's chart to my SkyTools chart and 54P's position on 13-Jan-2018 was essentially the same in both -- and not in the position of the blue nebula in question.

The APOD of 2017 March 30 has a nice image including LBN 782.