COMET LINEAR C/2000 WM1 ORBITS THROUGH THE STARS OF PERSEUS


Comet LINEAR C/2000 WM1 was discovered on December 16, 2000 by an automated 1-meter reflecting telescope belonging to the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research program in New Mexico. 

The comet was moving through the constellation Perseus on the evening of November 16, 2001 when sophomore physics major, Holly Groover, "might-have-been-a-physics-major", Rebekah Clark, and I observed the comet's motion by taking eight I-filter CCD images between 9:34 EST and 11:21 EST. The first image was exposed for 30 seconds, and the remaining images were all exposed for 120 seconds. The images were processed and assembled into a "movie" showing almost two hours of the comet's orbital motion. Approximately 14 minutes elapsed between each frame of the "movie" displayed below.



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