Comet C2007 W1 Boatini at its best

What a difference some months make! Comet Boattini was less of an impressive sight back in march, but is now a very bright body displaying lots of detail, having now passed its closest aproach to the Sun at the end of June at some 0.8 AU.

A screen shot from "Orbitas" (a great free software package from Julio Castellano) illustrates how the brightness of the comet has been increasing as it crossed perihelion.

Last night I left my telescope capturing as many photons as I could, and co-added the images together. The resulting image is very lightly treated with only a log scaling applied. A funny comma shape has been revealed in the last couple of weeks in images aquired and processed by Giovanni Sostero and Gustavo Muller.


The "intruder" at the bottom-left side of the image is mag. 12.5 asteroid Pomona.