One month of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
Taken by Ujvárosi Beáta on June 4, 2024 @
Remotely from Hakos, Namibia (via Skygems Network)
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Details:
After perihelion, the comet was visible only from the southern hemisphere.
I followed it via remote observing at Skygems Observatories using a 10 cm. telescope located in Hakos, Namibia. While conditions were far from ideal on many occasions (haze, moonlight) and total exposure times varied wildly (from 2 minutes to 30 minutes), changes are apparent over this period. The ion tail, sculpted by solar wind, took on different shapes each day: sometimes it split into multiple smooth streams, on other nights it indicated stormy space weather conditions showing knots or even a disconnection event, while fading slowly with the comet moving away from the Sun. Other changes, associated with viewing angle from Earth were happening slowly: the angles of the tails changed, and as we moved closer to the comet's orbital plane, the once wide dust tail compressed until an antitail emerged, a long and thin structure apparently pointing sunward formed by larger dust particles left behind the comet on its path.
On each image I noted the date and imaging time. Most of the sessions are L-channel only (monochrome) but for some of them I was able to take RGB data, so I processed them in colour as well and included this version in the montage. I also made a comet-aligned animation using the monochrome versions of all images, unfortunately due to variations in framing it is not the best, but it is still interesting to see the gradual changes.
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