252P/LINEAR 2016-Apr-12 John Chumack

Comet 252P/Linear..tracking on the Comet's Nucleus as it moves through space!

Back in Feb & March it was in the Southern Hemisphere and it went into Outburst from 15th magnitude to 6th magnitude, it recently climbed up into the Northern Hemisphere skies, look for it in the Eastern early Morning sky right now between 3:00am and 6:00am, it is easily visible in Binoculars under dark skies, and is fairly large and diffuse...so may look like a faint open star cluster to you in Binoculars. Currently it is in the constellation of Ophiuchus.

Comet 252P/LINEAR is a periodic comet and near-Earth object discovered by the LINEAR survey on April 7, 2000. The comet is an Earth-Jupiter family comet, meaning that it passes quite close to both Earth and Jupiter. This causes its orbit to be perturbed frequently on an astronomical timescale.[1]

The comet was thrown into the near-Earth region by Jupiter in 1785, before which it had a perihelion near that of Mars (1774–1785). Prior to this, it had a perihelion in the asteroid belt (1607–1774) and even further before was most likely a Jupiter Trojan.

I captured this image at my observatories at JBSPO in Yellow Springs, Ohio on 04-12-2016 from 07:50 U.T. to 09:02 U.T.
5.5 inch Diameter Newtonian reflector telescope, Modified Canon Rebel Xsi, ISO 1600, 72 Minute exposure Tracking on the Comet's Nucleus.