A Detailed Look at the Coma of Comet PANSTARRS

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Comet PANSTARRS has peaked, but astronomers are still keeping an eye on this comet to try and determine what its future might hold. The team from the

Remanzacco Observatory

has just produced some really interesting views of Comet PANSTARRS, with a little help from Martino Nicolini and his

Astroart software.

Team member Nick Howes called this software "one of the best astronomical image processing and acquisition tools around," and explained how these views can tell astronomers more about what is happening with the comet.

"The isophotes image (color coded) is a good way to see the morphology/structure of the coma," he told Universe Today, adding that comparing the images here is "a very good way to determine any major events like a fragmentation. We're hopeful that once PANSTARRS gets a bit higher, we'll be able to look at it in even more detail with the

2 meter Faulkes scopes.

"

And with the image processing in the image on the far right, it's possible to see a bright shell in the coma of comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS).

"The last elaboration in that image has been obtained using the M.C.M. (Median Coma Model), a filter that has the purpose of creating -- from an image of a comet -- a synthetic model of the 'regular' coma," said Ernesto Guido, from the Remanzacco team. "That is obtained by mapping all the pixels that compose the image and averaging them together. In doing so we delete all the morphological "non-uniformity" contained in the coma itself. This regular coma will then be subtracted from the original image highlighting all the details that are normally immersed in the uniform brightness of the coma."

Check out the

Remanzacco website

for more information and their continued updates.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com