Observation by Nick James: 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann outburst

Here is an image of 29P almost exactly 3 days after its big outburst. The expanding coma has reached a diameter of around 24 arcsec. The comet is currently 4.90 au away so 1 arcsec is around 3,500km at the comet. This implies an expansion velocity of 160 m/s which seems rather a lot.

Files associated with this observation

29p_20201122_1726_ndj.jpg (49.2 kB)

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Eric Watkins, Peter Carson, Jeremy Shears, David Swan

Comments

Nick James, 2020 Nov 22 - 21:43 UTC

A deeper image taken a little later shows more coma so the expansion velocity now looks to be more like 210 m/s.

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