[BAA Comets] Post-perihelion fragmentation of 168P/Hergenrother

[Richard Miles]

Further to the work of Giovanni Sostero, Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido as 
shown on their blog at:
http://remanzacco.blogspot.it/2012/10/splitting-event-in-comet.html

I have analysed all 15 R-band images of the comet taken by Nick and the team 
on October 26 using the Faulkes Telescope North alongside a similarly 
processed stack of 9 x 30 sec images taken by them on October 22 so as to 
show the development of features in the near coma during the 4-day interval. 
The results can be seen at:

http://www.britastro.org/~rmiles/Documents/168P_20121022-26.png

The analysis was carried out with the help of the image processing software, 
IRIS 5.55, for which I have to thank Christian Buil for a great piece of 
software.  See:
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/us/iris/iris.htm

The main fragment appears to have travelled about 2.4" as seen from a 
distance of 0.53 au in <4 days.  It should be interesting to see whether the 
fragment will be long lasting as in 73P or whether it will disintegrate and 
disperse over the next few weeks.

Richard Miles
BAA