Credit: Chris Schur
I just received this image of Comet 240P/NEAT from longtime Astronomy contributor Chris Schur, and I had to share it.
This comet was discovered by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program December 7, 2002. At that time, it glowed weakly at magnitude 18.4. It orbits the Sun every 7.6 years, and most recently arrived at perihelion (its closest point to the Sun) December 19, 2025. At that point it was a bit more than twice as far from the Sun as Earth. Its orbit carries it out as far as 5½ times the Earth-Sun distance.
Chris writes, “Very rare to see a comet split and have the secondary survive longer than a few weeks. Here we not only have the secondary inside the tail of the primary, but it also has its own tail, too. Very peculiar! Beautiful tawny yellow color. This dusty comet is one in a million for sure.”
To capture this image Chris used an Atik 16200 camera attached to his 10-inch f/3.8 Newtonian reflector and captured 60 minutes of exposures. The field of view of his image is 94′ by 75′ (1⅔° by 1¼°).
Great shot, Chris! I look forward to your next image.
