The Observatory and the Moon...

On the evening of January, 26th, the Moon decided to set exactly behind the domes of the Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO), as seen from our own observatory... not quite a cosmic alignement, but definitely an opportunity to get nice pictures of a somehow rare event.

Photos below: Cristian Valenzuela/Observatorio del Pangue - January, 26th, 2020

Photo below: Fernando Arancibia, visitor to the Observatorio del Pangue - January, 26th, 2020

Comet 2i/ Borisov, an interstellar visitor we didn't want to miss !

This comet has been discovered in August 2019 by the amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, and soon it appeared that it doesn't belong to the Solar System: this is the second object that we clearly identified as being interstellar (previous one was the asteroid 1i/ Oumuamua). The comet was not an easy target for amateur astronomers, since it's apparent magnitude never came brighter than 15.6, nevertheless on the evening of December, 26th, we managed to capture it on a series of pictures, and we even observed it visually at the 25-inch telescope (thanks to the clear skies of Chile...)

Below is one of the pictures : the two fuzzy spots on the upper half of the field are faint galaxies, while the comet is the even fainter spot below the center of the field, immediately right to a little star. The coordinates of the comet at that precise moment were (J2000) 11h56m53s/-31°49'43", in the Hydra constellation (North is up).

Same picture, with the comet circled...

And, just in case, here is a picture of the same area, taken some 20 minutes later, showing the actual motion of the comet...

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela/Observatorio del Pangue - December, 26th, 2019
Camera: Canon EOS 60D, exposure: 25 seconds, at prime focus of Meade LX200 16-inch telescope.