Object Information                                            Imaging Details

Comet C/2007 H3 (Lulin) visited Earth for a couple of months in early 2009. Peak brightness occurred around February 23. Lulin is a long period comet. There is no evidence that it has visited Earth before and may not again for many thousands of years. Two tails are clearly evident in the image. The longer whitish dust tail and the blue ion tail. The image spans roughly 2 degrees. Visually the tail extended for at least a degree (through a moderately-sized telescope). The map shows the position of the comet on 2/21/09.

The image was taken from ASLC's 'Upham' dark sky site on the evening of February 21, 2009. Winds were calm, and transparency and seeing were fair to good.

The image was selected as the Astronomy Picture of the Day for February 25, 2009!

Clicking the above image will bring up a higher resolution, higher quality image.

Telescope:

Celestron NexStar GPS 11