Comet Ikeya-Zhang

May 12, 2002, 07:10 UT
Instrument: 10-inch Starfinder

Comet Ikeya-Zhang continues to put on a fabulous display. The sketch at left renders the show at 36X in my 10-inch Newtonian. The comet is in Hercules cruising near the zenith. Its coma is large and bright, some 22' in diameter. The pseudo-nucleus is bright and slightly elongated along a north-south axis. The western portion of the coma appears brighter than its counterpart and a gossamer tail reaches beyond the field horizon to the south. This tail extends at least another full eyepiece field in length, which makes it about 2.5 degrees long. Averted vision suggests the presence of a second tail extending to the south-southeast from the eastern half of the coma. This ghostly veil appears to fade away at the field boundary. My sketch records 55 field stars. Among these, 8.0 magnitude HD 153625 standing 23' to the west. Several mid-8th magnitude GSC stars are also included.


March 16, 2002 Comet Ikeya-Zhang Main Page

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Revised: May 13, 2002 [WDF]