Comet Wirtanen Feb. 15, 2019
Click for larger GIF.
Annotated comet Wirtanen Feb. 15, 2019
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Picture 6We'll get you there unless we don't.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen has an orbital period of 5.4 years and was first discovered in January of 1948. It is named after Carl Wirtanen who was the astronomer that discovered it. It is aproximatel .75 miles in diameter.(What, no metric!?) Okay, aproximately 1.2 kilometers across. This series of pictures was taken with our ST120mm Astroview telescope with a Canon 80D camera. This GIF is a series of photos taken about 10 minutes apart and span almost 1 hour. We couldn't actually see the comet until after we processed the photos. .
Click for larger GIF.
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