Space is Big Christmas Tree with many Ornaments - A Look at Comet 46P/Wirtanen

I always love the Holidays at the end of the year - Christmas, New Years and everything that goes with it.  One of my favorite times during this season is decorating our Christmas Tree.  So often I think of space as a big Christmas tree decorated with the heavenly bodies.   The stars are the lights and then there are all kinds of fancy ornaments like nebula, planets, galaxies and comets.  The planets come in all kinds of colors and patterns:  Mars is red, Earth is Blue, Saturn has rings and Pluto even has a big heart on it.  The galaxies are majestic ornaments of differnet sizes and shapes scattered everywhere.  And then there are the comets in billion year old orbits showing their own brillance and shedding tails like tinsel.

Right now Comet 46P/Wiranen has been lighting up the sky although you need a telescope or binoculars to get a good look.   This comet is not really showing a great tail, but it has a huge green coma surronding it's nucleus which is amazing for something that is only 1.4 km wide.  The comet was closest to the Earth in mid-December, but I did not get out to photgraph it until December 22nd when I had a night of clear skies.   This was taken in a light polluted suburb and with a full moon, so the data is not the greatest.  I also struggled a little processing this one and will try to put that tuturial in a new post later.

For now, I just wanted to share this green ornament making its appearance near Earth and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

Photo details:
Scope:  SV90
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mount:  Celestron AVX
Exposure:  110 x 30 seconds
Processing Software:  PixInsight

More Comet 42P/Wiranen Details

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46P/Wirtanen