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Comet Linear 2000WM1

The following animation of comet Linear 2000WM1 was made at SSC's observatory from images taken the evening of 12/5/2001. These images have been dark subtracted, flat fielded, registered and cropped using IRAF.


Comet Linear 2000WM1 on 5 Dec. 2001


The images were then automatically scaled and exported as a GIF animation. All these task are performed by script extension in the SSC IRAF implementation. IRAF extension at SSC include:

 
         gifout( srcimage, destimage)
         movie( imagelist, iterations)
         animator( srcimage, destgifs)
         align( srcimage )
         calibrate( fitsimages, irafprefix, darkimage, flatimage)
         lsfilter( fitsimages, destimage, rotation, radialoffset, xcenter, ycenter)
         stdcombine( srcimages, destimage)
         medcombine( srcimages, destimage)
         

Users interested in copies of these extensions can contact SSC to obtain copies.

This same set of images was processed using SSC's medcombine routine to align all images on the comet nucleus and remove background stars. The resulting stretched image shows the extent of the tails. The comet is starting to develop an ion and a dust trail.

 

Composite White Light Image of 2000WM1

The final image shown here is the result of applying a Larson-Sekinina filter to the image above. The function of LS filtering is to accentuate the nucleus details in comets. Close examination of the enlarged inserts show the comet developing an anti-tail pointed at the sun.

 

 

 

SSC Observatories Offices:
1303 S. Ola Vista
San Clemente, CA 92682

Email: observatory <at> ssccorp.com


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