Astroblog: Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), 21 March 2014

Monday, March 24, 2014

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), 21 March 2014


Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring taken with iTelescope T9 on 6 Feb 2014. 5x120 second clear images stacked with ImageJ and SUMMED, then light contrast enhancement. Image cropped to 800x600 from 1530 by 1020 pixels. North is to the top. Click to embiggen.	Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring taken with iTelescope T9 on 21 March 2014. 5x120 second clear images stacked with ImageJ and SUMMED, then light contrast enhancement. Image cropped to 800x600 from 1530 by 1020 pixels. Click to embiggen.

Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring is brightening ahead of its visit to Mars in October of this year. It is still fairly dim, around magnitude 14, but brightening all the same. Here I've contrasted two shots one from Early Februray and the first one I have been able to get in March (moon weather, kids). Despite there being nearly two month between images, the overall coma brightness and tail length are pretty similar.