Comet 220P/McNaught

Comet 220P/McNaught is a small Jupiter‑family comet, maybe around 1–2 km across, doing its usual 5.5‑year trip around the Sun, but this year it has been acting way brighter than anyone expected. At the end of May it suddenly blew up in brightness, almost an 8,000× jump, the coma grew huge and both the dust and ion tails stretched out nicely. After that it dimmed for a bit before going crazy again on 5 August with another 600× surge. These repeated brightenings really make it look like something broke off or fresh ice got exposed, so the comet keeps changing shape, brightness rising and falling, and the tails shifting as it moves away from perihelion. I captured this with my wide field rig on 20 August 2026. The tail is not very long right now but it looks really good in a wide field, especially with the faint IFNs in the background.

Equipment:
- Telescope: Askar SQA85 Quintuplet Refractor
- Camera: Touptek 2600MM
- Mount: Proxisky Ragdoll 20
- Filters: Antlia 50mm LRGB with Touptek 7x2" Filter wheel
- Guider: Touptek OAG-X with Touptek GPM174M camera.
- Accessories: WandererRotator Lite V2 (M68), Touptek AAF, Gemini Power & Data Hubs Advanced 3, Gemini Astro Flat panel, GMKTek G3 mini PC.

Processing details: Star Stacking (Gradient correction on LRGB images - Noise X - Chanel combination - Saturation with Curves T. ) Comet stacking (repeated the above), removed the stars and comet from each and combined it in Pixel math.