Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Aquila (Aql)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila, Götz Golla
7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila
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7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila

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7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila, Götz Golla
7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila
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7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila

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Description

Comet P7/Pons-Winneke is seen in the center of the image. It was moving with 2.2'/hour in Aquila where numerous stars and dark clouds of the milkyway offer a beautiful background. The elongated shape of the comet is not due to its tail (which probably is too faint to detect), but due to its movement.

P7/Pons-Winneke was 0.625 AU away from earth and 1.3AU away from the sun, so it was further away from the sun than Earth, almost at the distance of Mars. I find it fascinating to detect its movement even though its that far away.

At the time of observation it was at an altitude of around 30deg and the moon was still dominant in the sky, so I was suprised and intrigued to get such a deep image without any filter.

In the image, SH2-74 is also barely visible above 19Aql. It would come out better with a narrowband Halpha filter, but unfortunatelly comets do not emit in the Halpha line. So its really hard to image a comet and a faint gas cloud at the same time.

Addendum: There is another very tiny object visible in this image, its the planetary nebula PN A66 53. Its just 30arcsec across, so you can only see it at full resolution. See also http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=PN%20A66%20%20%2053

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7P/Pons-Winneke in Aquila, Götz Golla