Starship Asterisk*

Outbound Comet ZTF

Explanation: Former darling of the northern sky Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF) has faded. During its closest approach to our fair planet in early February Comet ZTF was a mere 2.3 light-minutes distant. Then known as the green comet, this visitor from the remote Oort Cloud is now nearly 13.3 light-minutes away. In this deep image, composed of exposures captured on March 21, the comet still sports a broad, whitish dust tail and greenish tinted coma though. Not far on the sky from Orion's bright star Rigel, Comet ZTF shares the field of view with faint, dusty nebulae and distant background galaxies. The telephoto frame is crowded with Milky Way stars toward the constellation Eridanus. The influence of Jupiter's gravity on the comet's orbit as ZTF headed for the inner solar system, may have set the comet on an outbound journey, never to return.

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There are some nice dust clouds in this image. The color of the comet's dust tail is exactly the same as the other dust bunnies in the image. (Just maybe it is a tad more yellowish, i.e., it is slightly beige rather than an "absolutely non-red shade of gray".) The comet's coma still glows green.

Can anyone identify the reasonably bright bluish stars at 3 o'clock and sort of 9.30?

Ann

What are those long, faint, extremely straight diagonal lines on the right side of this image? Satellite trails or photographic artifacts?

Ann wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 8:34 pm There are some nice dust clouds in this image. The color of the comet's dust tail is exactly the same as the other dust bunnies in the image. (Just maybe it is a tad more yellowish, i.e., it is slightly beige rather than an "absolutely non-red shade of gray".) The comet's coma still glows green.

Can anyone identify the reasonably bright bluish stars at 3 o'clock and sort of 9.30?

Ann

Here you go...
_

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 8:36 pm What are those long, faint, extremely straight diagonal lines on the right side of this image? Satellite trails or photographic artifacts?


long lines.png

Satellites. Although with a stack of five frames, they should have disappeared with the usual processing steps.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:10 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 8:34 pm There are some nice dust clouds in this image. The color of the comet's dust tail is exactly the same as the other dust bunnies in the image. (Just maybe it is a tad more yellowish, i.e., it is slightly beige rather than an "absolutely non-red shade of gray".) The comet's coma still glows green.

Can anyone identify the reasonably bright bluish stars at 3 o'clock and sort of 9.30?

Ann

Here you go...
_
C2022E3_230321_Annotated.jpg

Thanks, Chris, that's pretty amazing!

You know the brightest star in the picture, the slightly bluish one at sort of "9.30 o'clock"? The one with the designation TYC 4748-1630-1? According to Simbad, that's a star of spectral class G2IV, and what's worse, they show a photo of an orange-colored star to illustrate it! I almost fell off my chair when I saw it!! I guess it's the bluish refection nebulosity surrounding the star that makes it look blue.

And you know that nice galaxy you identified for me? NGC 1665, with its gorgeous "galaxy shape"? Do you know it looks exactly the same in a "closeup" from SDSS, with no more details revealed?


I guess NGC 1665 used to look like NGC 1512 before it lost all its surrounding fluff, don't you think so?


Ann

[attachment=0]C2022E3_230321_1024.jpg[/attachment}
Fair wel;l ZTF1 Wave if you com by this way again!