Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lynx (Lyn)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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A Far Away Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS with Perihelion Upcoming, Dan Bartlett
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A Far Away Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS with Perihelion Upcoming

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A Far Away Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS with Perihelion Upcoming, Dan Bartlett
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A Far Away Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS with Perihelion Upcoming

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Description

Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS is seen here, taken with 152 x 90seconds on 2021-11-13, will reach perihelion on January 9, 2021.  Distance from the earth on the date of imaging is 3.0 A.U. !  It will close to 2.6 AU on January 6, three days before perihelion(3.6A.U.).  All this means is that this 10th magnitude comet won't get too much brighter unless...? Comets do what comets do.

This is as hard as comets get for me to process since the comet, at its distance, is moving only 339"/day when usually the easier ones are traveling at 1 to 2 thousand "/day.  This means PixInsight has a difficult time of distinguishing between the  background starfield and the comet - using the "cometalignment" process.

I present you with this view when Comet L3 is gliding across the field in Lynx.

Dan

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A Far Away Comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS with Perihelion Upcoming, Dan Bartlett