45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova
in the Morning sky
Feb 16, 2017

 
 This
            comet is moving past the Earth this week, and as you can see
            in the image here the comet is moving rapidly against the stellar
            background so fast as to produce long trails in even a short
            25 mins of luminance. The longest exposure I could do without
            trailing the comet was around 30 seconds! A very low surface
            brightness visually, this comet now near 7th magnitude was too
            dim to see clearly in the finder and is spread out over much
            of a degree or more.

            
Select an image size for a larger view:

1290 x 960
            


Lens:  12.5" f/5 Home bult Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Exposure:  30m LRGB
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
HOME   GALAXIES     EMISSION NEBS     REFLECTION NEBS   COMETS  
   GLOBULARS     OPEN CLUST     PLANETARIES     LINKS