Comet Lovejoy Q2 Rotation Animation
Taken by Mike Broussard on January 21, 2015 @
Maurice, Louisiana, USA
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Details:
A three frame animation, made from images taken January 19, 20, 21, 2015 and roughly 24 hours apart, of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). It clearly shows how the comet is rotating with respect to the Earth and is presenting different planes of ribbon-like, tail structures that are either edge-on or full face-on to us and every angle in between. Over the course of the 3 days, the comet looks like it rotated about 1/3 of the way around with respect to the Earth. So, I'm guessing that a repeating pattern of about every 9 days. This is borne out by looking at images taken on Jan 10, 2015 from several European observers. They have the same general appearance as the first image in the animation.
Photographer's website:
http://blog.cajunastro.com
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