Strange comet discovered at ESO

On August 7, 1996, Eric W. Elst (Royal Observatory, Uccle, Belgium) reported his discovery of a cometary image on mid-July exposures by Guido Pizarro with the 1.0-m ESO Schmidt telescope at the La Silla Observatory. Further ESO Schmidt plates were then obtained, and on August 19, with the help of orbital computations by Brian Marsden (IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, Cambridge, Mass., USA), Elst was able to identify the object on them. The comet can easily be identified in the frame. No coma is seen, only the pronounced, extremely narrow dust tail which points towards position angle p.a. = 252 deg (about 2 deg away from the direction towards the Sun). The overall length of the tail in the frame is about 7.6 arcmin (= 555,000 km at the comet), but actually it is longer than 8.5 arcmin, since it extends beyond the edge of the field of view of the original image.

Crédit:

ESO

À propos de l'image

Identification:eso9637a
Type:Observation
Date de publication:16 septembre 1996
Communiqués de presse en rapport:eso9637
Taille:608 x 491 px

À propos de l'objet

Nom:Comet, Eric W. Elst
Type:Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Catégorie:Solar System

Formats des images

Grand JPEG
173,6 Kio
JPEG taille écran
347,4 Kio

Fonds d'écran

1024x768
354,1 Kio
1280x1024
503,9 Kio
1600x1200
621,5 Kio
1920x1200
662,3 Kio
2048x1536
856,1 Kio

Couleurs & filtres

DomaineTélescope
VisibleESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope