Saturday, 10 March 2012

3rd Tail for Comet Garradd

I was looking at a Nasa pic of the day today and the wonderful image was of of the heavenly interloper Comet Garradd. The image was taken on Feb 24th http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120303.html and shows a 2nd Ion tail. My image of the comet was taken on the 22nd Feb and my previous pic was a stacked image using deep sky stacker aligning on the comet and tracking the stars.I see no sign of a 3rd tail. I reprocessed stacking the comet only and allowed the stars to trail. To my amazement I could see the hint of a newly formed Ion tail. I have not seen the tail on images prior to this so I may have captured the first jets of plasma as they slam into the magnetic fields in the solar wind.

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