45p 20220515 0300 molason

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova continues to get a little higher in the western twilight skies as can be seen in these images and gif animation collected on the evening of 2022 May 15 UT. The comet is 19' at position angle 258 degrees from the MPC predicted ephemeris position as it moved about 90" to the north of a magnitude 9 star located at RA 04h52m44s and Dec +23*08'20" from 0300-0314 UT in the gif animation. The comet continues to show very well in a green filter and it looked green in the color images. Using the green filter data Astrometrica calculated the magnitude at V=7.2 in an aperture diameter of 5', although the magnitude 9 star was included in the aperture diameter, not sure how Astrometrica calculates the magnitude with a star present in the aperture field. Images taken with no filter showed a coma of about 2' and a tail at least 10' long at a position angle of 84 degrees from the coma. Again Astrometrica calculated the magnitude at V=7.2 in the images taken with no filter. The gif animation shows the comet and stars getting brighter as the sky gets darker after sunset from 0300-0314 UT.