Archive for August 20th, 2011
The diameter of the comet Elenin’s coma confirmed by visual observations from the Earth
My estimate the size of the comet Elenin coma was confirmed by visual observations of an experienced Australian amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo. August 19, he estimated the angular size of the coma as 4 arc minutes, which equal to 213,500 km in the linear size. The image of the comet, taken by Michael, on August 19 as you can see on the left and on own author’s site.
I remind, that in the next few days, we have chances to see the comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) in the coronagraph COR2 field of view, which mounted on the STEREO spacecrafts.