The short horizontal spikes either side of the head of the comet are artefacts due to saturation of the detector. The comet was very bright & even in these short 4 second filtered exposures, slightly over-exposed.
The 17 sec clear / white light images also taken show the tail better but are heavily wiped out in the head region.
The green diagonal spike from the head is real though & must indicate a specific ionised gas emitting brightly in the LASCO Orange filter (shown as green in the RGB).
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread | More toots from markmccaughrean@mastodon.social
text/geminiThis content has been proxied by September (3851b).