Comet 2P/Encke in the Evening Twilight

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Photographer:

Mike Olason

Location of Photo:

Tucson, Arizona

Date/Time of photo:

26 July 2020, 0313UT

Equipment:

1" Refractor f/4 and ST-402ME CCD Camera

Description:

Yes, you are correct when you say this image of Comet 2P/Encke doesn't look like much, it certainly won't be mistaken for NEOWISE. 2P/Encke reached perihelion on June 25 in its 3.3 year orbit reaching magnitude 7.3 and if you lived in the Southern Hemisphere it was a nice binocular comet. But for those of us stuck in the Northern Hemisphere 2P didn't start appearing above the evening horizon until the end of July in a bright twilight sky. So given that these images were collected in a bright twilight sky with lots of clouds around, low to the horizon with a small 1" finder scope giving a nice 3.9 x 2.6 degree field of view and the fact that the images had to be very short due to the bright twilight it is probably not to bad of an image. The comet is the very faint greenish smudge in the middle of the white circle. Comet 2P was about magnitude 9 in this image, 59 million miles from Earth and moving 2.5 degrees per day across Earths sky.