Comet 2007 Q3 Siding Spring. June 7, 2009.
Combination of 10, 1 minute images, SBIG STL-1001E CCD.
300mm f/6 newtonian telescope at prime focus.
Comet 2007 Q3 Siding Spring was discovered at Siding Spring observatory in New South Wales, Australia. A very distant object at discovery, it did not reach perihelion until October 2009, at a distance of about 2.25 AU. Unfortunately at perihelion it was very poorly placed on the far side of the Sun and so never became a really bright object. Even so, it became a nice CCD object during 2010, when it reached around 10th magnitude and displayed a nice tail on CCD images.
My fist image of the comet was on June 7, 2009, when it was already getting low in the west shortly after sunset. It was around magnitude 11.4 with a small, well condensed coma and a short tail about 3 arc minutes in PA 184.
By early 2010, the comet was quite impressive in the CCD, being quite bright and displaying a nice tail.
