| Comet Ikea Zhang 2002 Comet IkeaZang was discovered by amateur astronomers and became a very bright evening comet in late March & early April 2002. Comets are objects formed of ice and debris when our solar system was being formed. The blue Ionic tail is readily visible and protrudes directly opposite the the sun. The tail of a comet is material from the comet as it is heated by the sun and is ejected from the comet. The solar wind aids in this process and the resulting gas & debris is illuminated by the sun. The tail points away from the sun while the head is pointed towards the sun as it orbits the Sun and then heads back into the deep reaches of our solar system, past Pluto and out into the Ort cloud. The particles from comet tails stay in space and when Earth passes through the space that a comet once transgressed we have a meteor shower. The major meteor showers we see are the small particles left from comets that crash into "Earths atmosphere" at high velocities. |
| Telescope / Lens | 100mm f/2.8 Camera Lens |
| Mount Type | Piggyback on G11 (Stepper) |
| Camera | Canon F-1 with Bright Screen & Angle B magnifier |
| Filters | 112mm UV |
| Film | Kodak E200 (Slide Film) |
| Exposure | 8 minutes; manual guiding FS/78 |
| Processing | Push II, Scanned - 2400 dpi, Photoshop |
| Date | 3/31/2002 |
| Location | Mile Post 9 Wolf Creek, south of Veneta, Oregon |
| Conditions | 1200' magnitude 52 Skies; Clear, right after sunset, windy |