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Photographer:

Jon Greif

Location of Photo:

Mayhill, NM, USA, remotely from Emeryville, CA, USA

Date/Time of photo:

December 26, 2019, at 2230 pm MST

Equipment:

Takahashi 250 mm Reflecting Telescope, SBIG Camera, Pixinsight 1.8.8 software

Description:

Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) is a non-periodic comet with a hyperbolic orbit, discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn when it was 2.4 billion km from the Sun. It is currently in the constellation of Camelopardalis in the Northern sky (near the Gemini Twins, Castor and Pollux). Its current distance from Earth is 227,456,521 kilometers. Light takes 12 minutes and 39 seconds to travel from Comet C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) to us. The closest approach of Comet C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) to Earth happens on Sun Dec 29 2019 at a distance of 227,403,666 kilometers. At its current brightness (magnitude 11), it is not visible to the naked eye, but should be visible in a modest sized telescope. This image was taken by me, remotely from Mayhill NM at the iTelescope.net observatory, using a Takahashi 250 mm (about 10 inch) reflecting telescope and an SBIG camera tracking the comet for 300 seconds.

Website:

http://skyandtelescope.org/author/jgreif/

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