252p 20160402 cschur

 This comet passed very close to the Earth a week ago, and now is in a moon free sky in Serpens. I was just able to glimpse this object naked eye, putting its magnitude near 6 or so. The very faint fan tail points to the left here, but is very tenuous. I used the six inch Astrograph because this comet is so huge, the field of the 10" would have been too close! A very rich star field and deep cyan color highlights this image. An interesting feature of this comet is that the blue image was brighter than the green one.
Lens:  Meade 622 Cometracker Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Camera: SBIG ST10XME
Exposure:  39m
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  4/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2