Comet 46P/Wirtanen at Perihelion

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Photographer:

Mike Olason

Location of Photo:

Denver, Colorado

Date/Time of photo:

12 December 2018, 0600UT

Equipment:

1" Refractor f/4 and ST-402ME CCD Camera

Description:

In this 2 hour Gif Comet 46P/Wirtanen was at Perihelion in it's 5.44 year orbit, 98 million miles from the Sun. 46P was 7.6 million miles from Earth and will make it's close approach to Earth on December 16 when it will be 7.2 million miles from Earth. In these images 46P has a coma about 1.25 degrees across. The images are 3.5 degrees wide by 2.5 degrees high. Each of the 3 images in the Gif is composed of a 5 minute red, green and blue image and are one hour apart. The comet moved 0.31 degrees across Earth's night sky during the 2 hours that these images were collected, that is the reason that each star appears as a red, green, blue dot streak as the RGB images were stacked on the fast moving comet. Denver light pollution and haze show in the images.