17P/Holmes

Comet 17P/Holmes is still putting on a good show. I mounted my camera on the front of our 36 inch Spacewatch Telescope again last night and took this image of the comet. The camera was in a spot I had lots of trouble getting to, so I had a devil of a time centering and checking focus, but I managed to get the focus right. I had to crop this image so that it appears more like an image with about a 500mm focal length since the comet ended up in the lower corner of my frame. Did I mention that the camera was mounted in a spot that I had trouble getting to? Oh, yeah, I did..... Anyway, the comet sits right next to the brightest star in Perseus - Alpha Perseus (Mirfak) which is to the upper left of the comet in this image. The comets nucleus is visible to the bottom right of the almost but not quite circular coma. To the upper left of the nucleus is a complex dust structure that is slowly blowing away from the comet, pushed by solar wind and if the image were deep enough, we would see a complex tail structure of fine dust and gas extending off the frame to the upper left. This image was taken at 190mm focal length with an exposure of 60 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 400.

17P/Holmes

This image of comet 17P/Holmes was taken last night using my 70-300mm lens with the camera mounted on the front of our Spacewatch 36 inch telescope - in essense, using our big telescope as a glorified guide scope. This image was taken at 92mm focal length with an exposure of 2 minutes at f/5, ISO 400.

17P/Holmes

This view of the constellation of Perseus from Tuesday night shows comet 17P/Holmes next to Alpha Perseus. The Pleiades star cluster (M-45) is at the left edge of the frame and the double cluster in Perseus is at the right. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 29 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 200.

17P/Holmes in Perseus

Anyone familiar with the constellation Perseus will notice an interloper in this image taken on Wednesday night from my front yard. Even with a nearly full moon nearby, comet 17P/Holmes is an easy naked eye object as it burst in brightness by about 14 magnitudes over its recent brightness estimates of just a few days ago! In this image, Perseus is near center with Cassiopiea in the upper left corner of the image. The brightest star in Perseus - Alpha Perseus - is near the center. The comet is immediately below it making a sideways right triangle with the star just below and right of Alpha Perseus. To help find the comet in my image and in the sky, here is a Sky & Telescope website with that information. This image was taken at 24mm focal length with an exposure of 30 seconds at f/4, ISO 400.

Daylight visible Comet McNaught

This is comet McNaught, just about 6 degrees from the sun today in broad daylight. I wasn't able to see it visually (gotta find something better than a palm tree to block the sun so I don't get sunspots in my vision), but with only a little stretching, was able to find it using my camera and 300mm lens. If I could find my binocs, I'm confident I could see it.... This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/8, ISO 100. (Thanks Richard for cleaning up the dust...)

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.