Comet 10P/Tempel 2 is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered on July 4, 1873, by Wilhelm Tempel from the Marseille Observatory in France.
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Comet 10P/Tempel 2 is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered on July 4, 1873, by Wilhelm Tempel from the Marseille Observatory in France. It orbits the Sun roughly every 5.36 years, swinging between a perihelion of about 1.42 AU and an aphelion of about 4.72 AU, with its path shaped strongly by Jupiter's gravity. At around 10 km across, its nucleus is relatively large for a Jupiter-family comet. During its 2026 apparition it made a notably close approach to Earth, passing within about 0.41 AU (roughly 62 million km) in early August. For imagers, periodic comets like this offer the chance to track visible night-to-night changes in coma shape and tail structure as the comet moves against the background stars.
[Source: Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10P/Tempel; theskylive.com]
Sky Location
The chart above shows where this image sits on the night sky. The yellow outline is its field of view, with the picture itself drawn at its true orientation; north is up and east is left. Click the chart to zoom in, and use "open full resolution" for the full-size chart.
Image Details
| Moon Phase: | Waxing Crescent |
|---|---|
| Camera: | Seestar S30 Pro (4K Sony IMX585 sensor) |
| Optics: | 160 mm focal length, f/5.3, 30 mm aperture (APO quadruplet) |
| Filter: | IRCUT |
| Binning: | 1x1 |
| Date: | 2026-07-17 |
| Number of images: | 20 |
| Exposure per image: | 60 s |
| Total imaging time: | 20 min |
PixInsight Processing
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