Kevin Palmer

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  • In December of 2018 Comet 46P/Wirtanen flew by the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Also known as the Seven Sisters, this star cluster is one of the closest to Earth at a distance of about 444 light years away. The extra hot and luminous stars cast their light on the nearby reflection nebula, which gives it the blue color. Comet 46P/Wirtanen was at it's closest approach just 7.2 million miles (11.5 million km) away from Earth. This makes it one of the top 10 closest comet encounters of the Space Age. While they look the same size in this image, the comet is quite a bit fainter, just barely detectable to the naked eye. The nucleus of the comet is less than 1 mile wide, but it's diffuse coma (cometary atmosphere) is larger than the planet Jupiter.
    The Flyby
  • I've been wanting to get an image like this for a long time. But it's been several years since we've had a comet this bright. This comet named 46P/Wirtanen was discovered in 1948 and will make it's closest approach to Earth next week. I had my doubts that this picture would happen. The comet would only be positioned above this snowy mountain for 3 nights at most. Even rarer than a clear night in December, I needed a night with no wind. But at 2AM on December 7th, everything came together. The temperature hovered around 0°F; it was a frosty nostril kind of night. When I first arrived in the Bighorn Mountains the comet was just visible to the naked eye, but the best view was through binoculars. In my pictures, it's about 2-3X the angular size of the moon. To make this image I captured a series of 6 shots using a star tracking mount. I had to be careful to align everything as accurately as possible while processing.
    Comet and Mountain