disintegrating comet C/2019 Y4
Comet C/2019 Y4 held promise to be a spectacular comet, possibly visible to the naked eye in May 2020. Unfortunately as a lot of comets passing close to the sun, Comet C/2019 Y4 is beginning to disintegrate. This image of the comet was taken the evening of April 9th, (April 10 U.T.) with the Little Blue 22″ at Sandlot Observatory.
You can see the small star-like piece that has broken away from the main nucleus. It is located just left and above the rest of the nuclear region. Once the flurry of activity subsides the comet will not likely become any brighter an average passing comet of roughly 9th to 10th magnitude.
Image Details;
22″ f4.1 reflector imaging at prime focus with a ST10XME CCD Camera. The image was comprised of a stack of 24 – 30 second images . Each image was offset in the direction of the comet’s motion via Astrometrica. The image above was cropped out of the original 22 x 14 arc-minute field of view.
C/2019 Y4 Image taken Apr 15 – changing fragmentation . There are now several components to the nucleus. One bright fragment in the left and a smaller fragment just below the bright one (barley discernible in the image) and a fainter condensation further toward the tail.
I originally thought A/2018 V3 was an asteroid (although it may end up being a comet) with a very long perihelion distance. But I was wrong; its max distance is just 4 A.U.’s but the eccentricity is .989( 99 times longer than wide orbit) and its inclination to the solar system is 165 degrees (almost perpendicular.)
This is an image taken just before dawn 07-11-18 with the new (to us) STL 6303E camera mounted on the Tombaugh .7 meter Reflector at 2 bin pixels ( 18 micron).
