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Friday, January 12, 2007

Comet McNaught over Tumamoc Hill

The brightest comet in 30 years is still quite a challenge to see since it is only about 10 degrees from the Sun. With the right equipment, it can be seen in the daytime. While my camera was able to capture this image (somewhat stretched to make the comet more visible), at the same time with unaided eyes, I was unable to spot the comet. This image was taken at 214mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400 and was cropped to about 1/3 to 1/2 of the frame. The comet is just left of center about 1/3 of the way from the top of the image. This image was taken about 20 minutes after sunset from the UofA campus. Tumamoc Hill is a flat-topped hill in the Tucson Mountains west of town which has radio towers as well as a couple small telescopes - you can see the largest dome of a 20 inch telescope silhouetted on the left.
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