Category Archives: comets

C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) – 8th Feb 2015

Field centred at: RA 02:00:07, Dec +45:10:35.
Field size: 51.4 x 38.9arcmin; Field rotation: up is 179.9° E of N
(plate solve by local astrometry.net instance)

Comet Lovejoy was discovered in summer 2014 by Terry Lovejoy and is a long period comet and had a period of about 11000 years (now reduced to about 8000 years after this approach to the sun.

C2014-Q2-20150208.jpg
Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2)

 

C2014-Q2-20150208-neg-tail.jpg
C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) – in negative, showing tail detail

 

Images were taken on the evening of the 8th Feb 2015 using an ST2000XM  through a William Optics FLT110 on Losmandy Titan. 26 each of L, R,G,B filtered frames, each taken in that sequence (so each frame of each filter starting about 5 minutes apart).

Processing of the colour image with the comet “frozen” against the stars followed Bernhard Hubl’s method of processing the comet. The negative image which enhances the tail was produced by a median combine of the data while aligned on the comet itself rather than the background stars (the comet was moving at about 2arcsec/min at the time).