These travelling masses of ice and dust galloping throughout the universe are believed to have shaped the course of life
on this planet. As a result of comet-hunting, many deep-sky objects including nebulae and galaxies have been discovered
with perhaps the most obvious collection being the 109 (or 110) DSO's attributed to Charles Messier. With over 1000 comets
now having been catalogued and approximately 200 having been established as being periodic, historical records suggest
comets to have been observed and documented as far back as 240 BC (Comet Halley by the Chinese).
Comets are appealing to amateurs for a variety of reasons: they lead to incredible photographs thanks to their glowing
and colourful tails extending millions of kilometers as they approach the sun and the ice and various frozen gases in the
nucleus begin to vaporize; they are the precursors of meteor showers as remnants left behind on prior visits are
encountered by our planet while we orbit the sun; and they represent an active adventure and form the basis of a
"culture" (comet hunters) based on the discovery of new comets during the early dawn hours on the eastern horizon or
just after sunset on the western horizon.
Note: The flourescent green glow surrounding the comet's coma below is due to the presence
of cyanogen (CN) and diatomic carbon (C2) in the comet nucleus and which glow green when sunlit.
Note: For a very interesting account of the comet's discovery, as described by Don Machholz
himself, click here. For an ephemeris and
orbital elements for this comet from Harvard's Minor Planet Center, click
here.
Designation: C/2004 Q2 Discoverer(s): Don Machholz August 27, 2004 Type: Periodic Period: 12,000 years Constellation: Taurus RA / Dec: 03h 38m 10s / 21° 03' 56" Distance: 0.3474 A.U. / 51,970,300 km Magnitude: 4.1 |
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Date: Jan 06, 2005 20:41:00 - 20:45:30 UT+2 Location: Athens, Greece Equipment: TeleVue Pronto Losmandy G-11 GEM Canon EOS 300d Baader UV-IR Cut Filter Exposures: 2 x 120 sec (RGB) 1 x 120 sec (Flat) ISO 1600 RAW Image Format 3072x2048 Image Size Manual Mode Software: Canon FileViewer V1.3.2 Photoshop V6 Processing: RAW to TIFF (16-bit) Conv Stitching Curves / Levels Light Unsharp Masking Layers Cropping Resampling JPG Compression |