Comet 46P/Wirtanen is a periodic comet discovered in 1948. It orbits the sun with a period of 5.4 years with a distance varying between 1.05 AU and 5.17 AU (1 AU = radius of Earth's orbit). In 2018 it made an unusually close approach to Earth (about 7 million miles) on 16 December and achieved naked-eye visibility (magnitude 4). It was the brightest comet of 2018 and was dubbed the "Christmas Comet" by some news sites.
During the close approach it was possible to detect the comet's motion over a period of less than ten minutes. I did not record the lens I used for these photographs.
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| Comet 46P/Wirtanen near the Pleiades, 16 Dec 2018. E-M5, ISO 800, 15 s. |
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8-min interval. Comet is moving right to left.
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Through the clouds. 15 December 2018.
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15 December 2018
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14 December 2018
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13 December 2018
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11 December 2018
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Some of these images are corrected for purple-fringing (a common flaw with old lenses), some are not. The brighter stars stand out better in the non-corrected images.
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