C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) 2020-Jun-19 Dan Bartlett

Imaging telescopes or lenses: Celestron RASA 8"
Imaging cameras: ZWO ASI 183MC Pro (cooled)
Mounts: 10micron GM1000HPS
Software: Pleiades Astrophoto, S.L. PinInsight 1.8 · Sequence Generator SGPro
Filters: Celestron LPR Filter

NGC 4085, 4088 and 4100 in field.

Last year was a busy year for comets. Prior to the now memorable COMET 2020 F3 NEOWISE, there was the disintegrating 2019 Y4 ATLAS, the fizzled out for us Northerners Comet 2020 F8 SWAN and others that we will soon forget. Comet C/2017 T2 PanSTARRS was with us through it all. Never coming closer to the Earth than 1.2au and a Periapsis of only 1.6 au this comet reached perihelion on May 4, 2020 around two months prior to this image. Although, ever far from the sun, it stayed with us for such a long time, slowly heating and brightening, it provided an often overlooked spectacle as it drifted across our heavens.

So now we are at a moment in time when the comets present are quite faint , although there are some hopeful prospects up and coming this year. With processing time plentiful I set out to make a training video on how to animate comets. Looking back at my accessible archives, I found a series of nights of unprocessed images with Comet 2017 T2 PanSTARRS passing by galaxies in UMa. So I went to it.

Here is the final version on the Night of June 19-20 2020 using a RASA8 and a ZWO asi 183mmPro. The animations are complete however the training video is not ready for YouTube as yet.

Hope you enjoy.

Dan