Telescope Reviews: Fastest Comet in the Sky

By that I mean fastest relative motion. C/2012 K5 LINEAR was racing through Taurus on December 31st at 13.89 arc seconds per minute, relative to the star field. Maybe it was celebrating New Year's Eve?

I think this is the fastest relative motion of any comet I've imaged in the past decade. It is much faster than almost all asteroids. I imaged it for two and a half hours taking 60 second subframes. That was as long an exposure as I could take without comet blur.

The fast relative motion allowed me to compose an animated GIF -- take a look at the link below.

Please take a look at my web page -- images, isophotes, orbit diagram, light curve, movie -- all kinds of data.

http://users.FoxValley.net/~dpersyk/new.htm .

Clear skies,

Dennis Persyk
Hampshire, IL

Igloo (Now Roll-Off) Observatory Home Page http://users.FoxValley.net/~dpersyk
New Images http://users.FoxValley.net/~dpersyk/new.htm
Pier Design http://users.FoxValley.net/~dpersyk/Pier_Design.htm
Daily Bread Inspirational Page (Helicopter Parable) http://users.foxvalley.net/~dpersyk/DailyBread/