Comet Elenin comet garradd

As Comet Elenin passed to within just 7 million kilometers of the STEREO (Behind) spacecraft, NASA rolled the spacecraft to take a look at it (Aug. 1, 2011) with its wide angle HI-2 instrument. Though the observation lasted only a little over an hour, the fuzzy looking comet can be seen moving across a small portion of the sky. STEREO will be taking these one-hour observations every day through August 12.

The comet is seen by the HI-2 telescope between August 1-5, and by the higher resolution HI-1 telescope between August 6-12. From August 15 onward, the comet enters the HI-1 telescope's nominal field of view,

1. The closest the comet will come to Earth is 0.23 AU (Astronomical Units), or approximately 34-million kilometers, so it poses no threat to us. We will attempt to keep this page updated with the latest observations.

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/item.php?id=selects&iid=154

Orbit Diagram

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=elenin;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

Stereo

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/images .

Try, for example, "Ahead HI1," "Slideshow," 512 x 512 resolution, start date = 20110801, and end date = 20110803.

I've labelled objects I recognize on the attached image. I believe the object to the lower right of Alpha Sco is M4.

You can also get an approximate idea of what's in the field of view (which is larger than the circle in he resulting diagram) with the SECCHI star map tool at:

http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=sky/secchimap

(enter date, spacecraft, instrument at the bottom of the page). The dashed, red line is the ecliptic.