Comet Garrard c2009 P1 continues to amaze

[drclay]

Magificent tails of Comet Garrard continue to amaze....UPDATE on March 3

The image below (click to enlarge) was obtained at ASO H45 Petit Jean Mountain in pre-dawn hours of March 3, 2012, showing the TWO tails of comet C2009 P1 Garrard.  The monochrome image was obtained at 9:20 U.T.

The black and white (monochrome) is a single 150 second image and clearlylshows both the dust (to the right) and Gas/ion (to the left) tail of the comet in great detail; the ION tail measures to be over 26 arc minutes in length.

The piggyback wide field comet telescope, a 110mm f/4.9 APO refractor riding on the large observatory astrograph took these images, which cover 47 x 75 arc minutes of sky, over twice the diameter of the full moon; thus some idea of the size of the greenish coma, or head, of the comet can be realized.  The camera used was the wide field comet camera, a modified ST2000 XM with color filter wheel computer operated.

The comet is presently in the constellation of DRACO, high in northern skies about dawn; the comet will continue to brighten and be a spectacular sight until at least late May of this year.  At magnitude 6.6, as measured at the observatory on March 3 the comet is easily seen in binoculars or a small telescope and will appear as a conspicuous "fuzzy star"; the tails of the comet will not be seen with small instruments.

[Ron]

Doc,

Thanks for the update, I sure am glad it's going to be around a little longer.  I wasn't able to view it at my club's winter star party, since it was cloudy for four days in the AM and mostly cloudy in the PM.

I only see one image in your post, do you have a color image?

Ron

[drclay]

Whoops....no just one monochrome on this one....the seeing conditions were horrible last night and no RGB.

Doc.