Comet C/2020 R4 ATLAS developing features

[Denis Buczynski]

Hello all,
Attached is an image of C/2020 R4 taken tonight 20210429_30 at Tarbatness. The comet seems to be developing and changing quite quickly now.
Best wishes
Denis Buczynski

Attachments:

1. 

   2020r4_20210429_2213_DGB.jpg
   

[David Swan]

Thanks for letting us know. I’ll get on it as soon as possible – from the forecast, it looks like Sat eve may be clear where I am.

[Grant Privett]

Thats rather nice. Must have a go at that.

Saturday best bet here too. Its traditional though, we’re past full moon, hence its cloudy.

[Robin Leadbeater]

I took a low resolution spectrum across the coma last night. Here is the raw image including sky lines

[Robin Leadbeater]

The CN emission (line at the left edge)  extends beyond the ends of the ~6 arcmin long slit

[Robin Leadbeater]

Here is the approximate extent of the spectrograph slit superimposed on Denis’s image.

The CN emission is actually much more intense than the raw spectrum image suggests as the spectrograph sensitivity is low in the UV.  The comet would look pretty spectacular in a narrow band CN filter !

[Robin Leadbeater]

One of these perhaps ?

https://www.semrock.com/FilterDetails.aspx?id=FF01-387/11-25

seen in action here

https://wirtanen.astro.umd.edu/46P/CN_filter_test.shtml#Jorma_update

[Nick James]

This comet is now quite a nice target for small, widefield instruments. I imaged it with a 90mm refractor last night.

[Daryl Dobbs]

I caught a glimpse of in between the clouds with my 15×70 binocular, developing well.

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