Comet 117P

Last night I was inspired to take a photo of comet 117P after seeing some recent messages on the ASV comet list regarding it. Days earlier I had looked for available comets to photograph and missed this one.

I was surprised by the length of 117P’s tail. The comet is relatively faint (around magnitude 14 I believe) yet the tail is quite elongated. While it’s not something probably worth “writing home about” it’s also not a sure bet to get a visible tail on a magnitude 14 comet. Not from my experience anyhow.

Future images of the comet will be posted on the 117P comet page.

Photograph of Photograph of Comet 117P/Helin-Roman-Alu at 2013-06-03T13:41:55.686 UTC
Photograph of Comet 117P/Helin-Roman-Alu at 2013-06-03T13:41:55.686 UTC using 12″ SCT telescope at 2200mm focal length, with ST8-XME camera at bin 1×1 equating to approximately 0.86 arc seconds per pixel. 5 x 180 second exposures averaged. Image inverted.