cortez
5th August 2011, 03:46 PM
http://spaceobs.org/en/tag/comet-elenin/
Diameter of coma of comet Elenin exceeded 200,000 km
August 4th, 2011 | Author: Leonid Elenin
GFSC / NASA / L. Elenin
A few hours ago I got the first original comet images in FITS format, taken on August 1 (many thanks to Karl Battams, STEREO team member). Several frames was damaged, but the team believes that will solve this problem at the next session. I stacked all images by the comet movement, this has increase the singnal/noise ratio, see the comet with more “details”.
So, the first results. The comet has grown. Now the diameter of it’s outer coma exceeded 200,000 km! Of course, at this time we have only low resolution images, but they still allow us to estimateits current size. I want to remind you that the outer coma, it’s very discharged gas envelope, not the nucleus itself, estimates of the nucleus size has not changed. On the left picture you can see the comet itself, as well as the angular size of the Sun, if it was located at the same distance as comet. Impressive?
Diameter of coma of comet Elenin exceeded 200,000 km
August 4th, 2011 | Author: Leonid Elenin
GFSC / NASA / L. Elenin
A few hours ago I got the first original comet images in FITS format, taken on August 1 (many thanks to Karl Battams, STEREO team member). Several frames was damaged, but the team believes that will solve this problem at the next session. I stacked all images by the comet movement, this has increase the singnal/noise ratio, see the comet with more “details”.
So, the first results. The comet has grown. Now the diameter of it’s outer coma exceeded 200,000 km! Of course, at this time we have only low resolution images, but they still allow us to estimateits current size. I want to remind you that the outer coma, it’s very discharged gas envelope, not the nucleus itself, estimates of the nucleus size has not changed. On the left picture you can see the comet itself, as well as the angular size of the Sun, if it was located at the same distance as comet. Impressive?