46P/Wirtanen 2018-Dec-08 Chris Schur

This 4.3 magnitude comet is currently naked eye in Eridanus on the meridian around 9pm local time. It is getting quite large, and the coma will no longer fit in the 10 inch newtonian. Here, I used the 80mm f/6 Stellarvue APO and an f/4.3 Televue coma corrector. The field is about 2.5 degrees wide. A surprising number of faint galaxies appear in this field as well. Exposures totally just over 100 minutes were combined using a brand new tecnique which easily separates the trailed background stars from the stationary comet. Only by using this method did the dim gas tail become evident, not visible using either average or median combine methods.

Lens: 10" f/3.9 Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform: Astrophysics AP1200
Camera: SBIG ST10xme
Exposure: 100m
Location: Payson, Arizona
Elevation: 5150 ft.
Sky: Seeing 7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature: 30F
Processing Tools: Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2

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