41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák

Comet 41 P cruising in front of the stars in the constellation Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Taken with the 66mm. Altair Astro Doublet with 0.8x focal reducer and field flattener, Canon 600d DSLR all on a Star Adventurer equatorial mount. 22x30 second lights at ISO1600 with darks and flats stacked and processed using DeepSky Stacker.

This comet is visible currently from the United Kingdom. It is a 'periodic' comet - a comet that orbits the Sun and returns to its innermost point (perehelion) at known intervals. Comet 41 P will reach perehelion at the beginning of April 2017. After this encounter with the Sun it will head back out past the gas giant planets; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, following an elliptical orbit which will bring it back again in approximately 5.4 years.

The comet will pass Earth at its closest on the 1st of April 2017 when it will be at a distance of 13.2 million miles. You should be able to see this comet with binoculars but it may well be quite faint. It's nucleus is only about 1 mile in diameter.  In the past, this comet has been known to brighten quite unexpectedly so, after dark on the first few nights of April, it is worth looking in a wide area to the west of a line drawn between the Pole Star and the 'pointer' stars in the Great Bear and you just might get to see this comet .

Enlarged Image of 45P  taken at ISO6400 for 10x20 secs

"Comet the Observatory cat likes this one" Kurt Thrust - Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.