430p 20211209 1111 molason

Hello Gentlemen,

I collected these images of 430P/Scotti back on 2021 December 9 and after hearing about the fragmentation of the comet decided to take a look at them. It appears the comet started fragmenting before December 9 as the images appear to show 2 fragments. To avoid deleting as much information as possible the only thing done to the images was contrast/brightness control after the images were stacked by Astrometrica, no flat field or dark subtraction to any of the images. The upper left inset image was smoothed a little bit to better define the fragments and smooth the noise. The 2 fragments are magnitudes G=18.7 and 18.6 in a 10" aperture diameter. The entire complex has a magnitude of G=16.7 in a 30" aperture. The composite image is composed of 3x180s + 13x120s images.

Cheers, Mike.