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Tom Marsala
Menifee, CA
03/31/2020
12:00 am

Equipment Details:

Canon 6D
Celestron C 9.25 at f/10
EQ6-R mount

Post-processing Details:

deep Sky Stacker
Photoshop
Comet Processing + star processing separately
40 1-minute exposures

Image Details:

It's coming! Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) is currently within the orbit of Mars and heading our way. As of this date, it is in the constellation Camelopardalis heading toe\ward the west. Last night it was magnitude 8.3 and is increasing in brightness daily. It was not bright enough for me to see and so I relied solely on coordinates from TheSkyLive website. It will come closest to us (a tad less than one AU-about 73,000,000 miles) on May 23. its 6000 year period is almost parabolic. it gets its green color from diatomic carbon emissions. Comets are very unpredictable, so it is a tough call to say how it will perform over the next 2 months. But it has potential to be a magnitude 3 or 4 which would be fantastic for the casual observer!

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