by bystander » Sat Apr 18, 2020 3:40 pm
Fragmentation of Comet ATLAS Observed on the First
Crowd-Sourced Pictures from Citizen Astronomers
SETI Institute | Unistellar eVscopes Network | 2020 Apr 16
A group of citizen astronomers scattered all over the world has just demonstrated how a network of digital Unistellar eVscopes can work together to deliver the first-of-its-kind crowd-generated images of Comet ATLAS while its disintegrating.
Discovered in December, Comet ATLAS was expected to become the brightest comet of 2020, visible to the naked eye. Several days ago, however, astronomers began to suspect that the comet had split into multiple pieces when it began dimming rapidly. At Unistellar, this created a unique opportunity to summon our community of citizen astronomers together to collect a high-quality image of this beautiful, but dying cosmic phenomenon.
On the night of Saturday, April 11, dozens of eVscope users in Belgium, Finland, France, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries gathered virtually to set up eVscopes in their backyards, on balconies, or out in the countryside. Their locations varied, but they all had one and only one goal in mind: capture photos of the dying comet. A similar call for observations was released on Tuesday, April 14 for the US after demise of the comet was announced to image variation in the coma of the comet. ...
[url=https://seti.org/press-release/fragmentation-comet-atlas-observed-first-crowd-sourced-pictures-citizen-astronomers][size=125][b][i]Fragmentation of Comet ATLAS Observed on the First
Crowd-Sourced Pictures from Citizen Astronomers[/i][/b][/size][/url]
SETI Institute | Unistellar eVscopes Network | 2020 Apr 16
[quote]
[float=right][img3="Crowd-sourced Observations of the Comet ATLAS from Unistellar Network on Saturday April 11 (left) and Tuesday April 14 (right). The differences in morphology of the coma suggest that the comet is fragmenting."]https://seti.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/Zoom_EU_USA-unistellar.jpg[/img3][/float]A group of citizen astronomers scattered all over the world has just demonstrated how a network of digital Unistellar eVscopes can work together to deliver the first-of-its-kind crowd-generated images of Comet ATLAS while its disintegrating.
Discovered in December, Comet ATLAS was expected to become the brightest comet of 2020, visible to the naked eye. Several days ago, however, astronomers began to suspect that the comet had split into multiple pieces when it began dimming rapidly. At Unistellar, this created a unique opportunity to summon our community of citizen astronomers together to collect a high-quality image of this beautiful, but dying cosmic phenomenon.
On the night of Saturday, April 11, dozens of eVscope users in Belgium, Finland, France, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries gathered virtually to set up eVscopes in their backyards, on balconies, or out in the countryside. Their locations varied, but they all had one and only one goal in mind: capture photos of the dying comet. A similar call for observations was released on Tuesday, April 14 for the US after demise of the comet was announced to image variation in the coma of the comet. ... [/quote]