Back to Comets
Up to the Gallery of Astrophotography
Home to astro.nightsky.at
|
Back to Comets
|
Up to the Gallery of Astrophotography
|
Home to astro.nightsky.at
|
|
Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is a short-period comet which was discovered in 1930. It revolves around the sun in 5,36 years. The comet's elliptical orbit takes it slightly within earth's orbit at the perihelion (the point on its orbit when the comet is closest to the sun) and slightly further out than Jupiter at the aphelion (the point on its orbit when the comet is farthest from the sun). It was probably caught by Jupiter at some time in the past.
During the 1995/96 perihelion, the comet broke up in three fragments after an unexpected increase in brightness (with 6th magnitude, it was a binocular target during twilight). Since then, it has further fragmented into more than 30 parts. During the April/May 2006 perihelion, four of the fragments were observable with amateur telescopes: B, C, G and R. Fragment C, which is pictured here, is the main component which most closely follows the orbit of the original comet, its brightness being about 8.5 magnitudes when I took the image. Fragment B was even brighter, about 5th magnitude, and an easy target for binoculars.
The image above was taken during morning twilight of May 13th, with the full moon up in the sky. The comet fragment's core was not bright enough for the autoguider, so I had to take many short exposures guided on the stars, which I afterward combined to create this image. Because of the comet's rapid movement, and because I only used the best exposures taken during half an hour of image-gathering, the stars appear as dotted lines.
Click here for an animation of the comet frament's movement made in part of individual exposures which were also used for this image.
Click here to read a report of our comet observations during that night (in German).
Exposure Data
|
Back to Comets
|
Up to the Gallery of Astrophotography
|
Home to astro.nightsky.at
|
