Comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) 5 hour Gif of Close Approach to Earth

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Photographer:

Mike Olason

Location of Photo:

Denver, Colorado

Date/Time of photo:

12 February 2019, 0534-1109UT

Equipment:

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

Description:

This gif is a collection of six 30 second RGB images taken at 0534UT, 0640UT, 0801UT, 0855UT, 0944UT and 1109UT during the night of Comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) close approach to Earth. The images are unevenly spaced because of clouds moving through Denver's sky. The images were taken through haze and thin clouds which show as different shades of red, green, blue in the images and dimmed the comet. Comet Iwamoto moved 1.7 degrees over the 5 hours 35 minutes of this gif, each image had a FOV of 3 degrees by 2.25 degrees. The equatorial mount was not perfectly polar aligned and when the mount moved from the east side of 180 degrees to the west side of 180 degrees a jump in the stars in the gif can be seen. Due to the comet moving at 0.3 degrees per hour the red, green and blue images were limited to 30 seconds to not show a streaked comet or streaked stars even in these large FOV images. Comet Iwamoto was 28 million miles from Earth and about magnitude 7. The comet's closest approach to Earth was at about 20:00UT, not visible from Denver. The images were taken through an efinder scope, a 1" Refractor f/4.