RE: Catching Comet Wirtanen this December

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RE: Catching Comet Wirtanen this December

terrylovejoy (62)in #steemstem • 6 years ago

Thanks, Kevin, fingers crossed for clear skies! There is also some suggestion that there might some interesting dust-tail features caused by favorable viewing geometry in December, however, I am not sure the comet produces enough dust for this to eventuate.

6 years ago in #steemstem by terrylovejoy (62)

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astrophoto.kevin (69) 6 years ago

Thank you Terry :-)
I am very curious about his appearance. But also if I can do it. That would be the first attempt with Goto tracking on a comet. I should be able to get the coordinates from planetarium software. However, I don't know where I can get the speed to the tracking rate. Do you have a tip for me?

$0.00

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terrylovejoy (62) 6 years ago

Hi Kevin, try JPL Horizons which can output RA and Dec rates for you. But to save you time I ran it for December and here are the rates in arc sec per hour.

Date	RA	Dec	RA Rate	Dec Rate
2018-Dec-01 00:00	02 33 39.40	-19 47 07.9	106.5399	211.3702
2018-Dec-03 00:00	02 40 09.20	-16 41 48.7	125.8812	252.8097
2018-Dec-05 00:00	02 47 41.57	-13 00 27.5	148.6121	301.4359
2018-Dec-07 00:00	02 56 26.47	-08 37 21.5	174.9634	356.9316
2018-Dec-09 00:00	03 06 35.16	-03 27 42.6	204.7513	417.1440
2018-Dec-11 00:00	03 18 19.99	+02 30 26.5	237.0581	476.9242
2018-Dec-13 00:00	03 31 53.80	+09 13 28.3	269.9222	527.4590
2018-Dec-15 00:00	03 47 28.82	+16 29 33.3	300.2982	557.5045
2018-Dec-17 00:00	04 05 14.63	+23 58 10.7	324.5852	557.4674