Comet C/2024 E1 Wierzchoś

 

After traveling for millions of years from the Oort Cloud, the comet C/2024 E1 Wierzchoś rounded the sun on January 20th at a distance of 85 million miles. That's just slightly closer than the earth is to the sun, so, by cometary standards, E1 Wierzchoś was doomed to underperformance from the outset. 

As if its closest-approach (perihelion) distance wasn't bad enough, our indifferent planet refused to cooperate during the comet's only known apparition through the inner solar system. Earth was already moving out of range when E1 Wierzchoś reached its closest distance to us, as recently as February 17th.

These unfortunate circumstances produced the unsatisfying result (above) that I captured only two days following the comet's closest approach to earth. The image is a stack of 8 frames totaling two minutes of exposure time at f/2 with the 11-inch telescope.


The orbital view (above) from JPL's Small Body Database Lookup site shows the path of Comet Wierzchoś, coming in at a very steep angle to the plane of the solar system. This gives good visibility to those of us who live in the northern hemisphere. Too bad this part of the recipe that makes a good comet was laid to waste by the other ingredients!

Another thing you'll notice from the graphic is how narrow the ellipse of the orbit is. Astronomers call it a hyperbolic orbit, as opposed to the more broadly shaped parabolic cometary orbits. Why should I bother to bring up these descriptive labels? Well, if a comet is following a parabolic orbit, it's considered a closed orbit, meaning the comet will make many more future circuits around the sun, just like the planets. But a hyperbolic orbit is considered to be an open-ended orbit. That is, on the outbound leg of its journey, Comet Wierzchoś will become an interstellar comet. It will not return.

Despite its disappointing appearance, I wanted to get a picture of Comet Wierzchoś because it was discovered practically in my back yard, by University of Arizona astronomer Kacper Wuerzchoś, using the 1.5-meter telescope at the Mount Lemmon Survey observatory. I can see the dome of that instrument from here in my back yard. My picture above shows two domes of the Mount Lemmon Survey along the ridge of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was taken from my porch!



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