[BAA Comets] Comet 2013US10 Catalina tail visible

[Peter Carson]

Hi All,
Attached is my image of C/2013US10 Catalina taken a few days ago on the Sept 12th.
When I was preparing the image for the BAA image archive I noticed what appeared to be a faint tail.
I highly contrast stretched and inverted the image to better show faint detail and indeed a wavy tail became apparent. This rather puzzled me as this once grand comet is now far from the Sun.
Having investigated further it turns out the Earth is within 2 degrees of the orbit plane of the comet and these dust particles we are seeing are probably quite old and lying flat along the orbit plane. We are seeing the particles nearly edge on and “downstream” .
Thought others might like to see the image and confirm my findings are correct.
All the best
Peter