February 14, 2019  

Early February 2019 sees Comet Y1 Iwamoto race up from below the Bowl of Virgo asterism, into the constellation Leo.
The comet sits 30-40 degrees above the SW horizon in the pre-dawn, transiting highest at 40-50 degrees due south as seen from 30 degrees north latitude around 4 AM local through mid-February.


As comets approach the sun and perihelion – the solar wind sublimates the icy molecules on the surface of a comet into gas.
What began as a small, icy snowball is then expanded into a gaseous coma, sometimes with a tail extending millions of miles away and pointing in a direction away from the Sun.
Sometimes there is another tail of debris shed by the sublimation. It moves in the direction of travel of the comet and usually appears whitish as it is being lit by sunlight.
Ultra Violet light from the Sun interacts with the gaseous coma, exciting the atoms and molecules.
As the atoms relax back to their ground state, they emit light, which is the green/blue green glow that we frequently see in a comet's coma.
The color of the emmited light depends on the chemical composition of the comet,
and green represents cyanogen CN2 and diatomic carbon C2, both of which are usually predominant in most comet's makeup.

iwamota

IWAMOTA

Comet Iwamoto, C/2018 Y1, February 8th, 2019 @ 00:28 EST.
Shot from my Observatory in Statesville, NC.
Canon 60Da Astrocamera. 45 second exposure at 1600 ISO.
Single frame. Will start stacking tomorrow. G'night, y'all....
IWAMOTA


Screen capture of Comet Iwamoto, C/2018 Y1, February 8th, 2019 @ 00:28 EST.
Shot from my Observatory in Statesville, NC.
Canon 60Da Astrocamera. 45 second exposure at 1600 ISO.
Screen capture of IWAMOTO

Comet Iwamoto, C/2018 Y1 looks really nice in the scope but is really difficult to find without goto.
Here's what it looked like in the eyepiece of my Explore Scientific 152 with a 2" 32mm eyepiece.
If it keeps brightening the way it has, it could potentially become a pretty good comet.

Eyepiece view

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