Comet
17P/Holmes flared into visibility on October
24th. Between October 23–24, 2007, Comet
17P/Holmes grew much brighter, going from about
magnitude 17 to about magnitude 2.8 in just 42
hours. The first person reportedly to notice a
change was J. A. Henríquez Santana on Tenerife in
the Canary Islands. This represents a change of
brightness by a factor of about half a million
and is the largest known outburst by a comet.
Comet 17P/Holmes is a periodic comet in our solar system, discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes on November 6, 1892. Its discovery in 1892 was made because of and during magnitude changes similar to the 2007 outburst. 17P/Holmes brightened to an approximate magnitude of 4 or 5 before fading from visibility over a period of several weeks.
At first the expanding dust cloud around its icy nucleus appeared so small that it looked like a bright star to the unaided eye, this was the first image below I captured on Oct 25th of the comet. Within days the cloud spread out wider, so that the comet became a fuzzy round disk. Since then the disk has been getting wider every night, and as the dust has spread its brightness has greatly dimmed.
This comet is a bit unusual comet because it appears to have no tail. In this case that is because we are looking at it nearly head on. The tail is behind and slightly to the right of it in the images below.
All the images below were captured with a Canon 350D prime focus using a Orion ED80, Atlas mount, and guided through a SN6".
Comet 17P/Holmes is a periodic comet in our solar system, discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes on November 6, 1892. Its discovery in 1892 was made because of and during magnitude changes similar to the 2007 outburst. 17P/Holmes brightened to an approximate magnitude of 4 or 5 before fading from visibility over a period of several weeks.
At first the expanding dust cloud around its icy nucleus appeared so small that it looked like a bright star to the unaided eye, this was the first image below I captured on Oct 25th of the comet. Within days the cloud spread out wider, so that the comet became a fuzzy round disk. Since then the disk has been getting wider every night, and as the dust has spread its brightness has greatly dimmed.
This comet is a bit unusual comet because it appears to have no tail. In this case that is because we are looking at it nearly head on. The tail is behind and slightly to the right of it in the images below.
All the images below were captured with a Canon 350D prime focus using a Orion ED80, Atlas mount, and guided through a SN6".
Comet 17P/Holmes
Oct.
25, 2007
Nov.
6, 2007
Nov.
18, 2007 passing by Mirfak
Nov.
28, 2007
Dec.
18, 2007