C/2011 KP36 (Spacewatch) 2016-Oct-20 Chris Schur

Lens: 10" f/3.9 Orion Astrograph Newtonian
Platform: Astrophysics AP1200
Exposure: 1h 15m
Location: Payson, Arizona
Elevation: 5150 ft.
Sky: Seeing 7/10, Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature: 52F
Processing Tools: Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2


This 14th magnitude object is low in Cetus in the early evening sky, and is currently one of the brightest decent comets to image this month. Ive made the image lighter to show the unsuual tail and coma appearance. There appears to be an elongated coma going east/west and a short tail like structure pointing right in this image.

There are hordes of faint galaxies in this image! The second panel shows an over lay of Cartes du Ciel mapping program for this field, nearly all galaxies here are fainter than 15th magnitude, with the faintest here plotted such as PGC1063550 to the comets lower left is 18.6th magnitude. But many more fainter groups of galaxies can be seen in the large image, fainter than 19th magnitude.