I’m late to the party, but finally got to image 3I/ATLAS as it heads away from us and out of the solar system. The images for the animations below were captured on January 11th with my Celestron Origin.
Because 3I/ATLAS was moving very quickly at 2.65 arcsec/min, and because the image scale of Origin images is 1.47 arcsec/pixel, I had to limit my exposures to no more than 2 min for each image in the animation (12x10 sec) to avoid smearing or trailing 3I’s image. Unfortunately, with 3I/ATLAS having faded to near magnitude 14, two-minute images were not enough to capture its remaining tail and coma. There is, however, a hint of tail and coma in these animations, especially the zoomed-in animation.
3I/ATLAS Full Field
3I/ATLAS Close Up
