Comet 46P/Wirtanen
in the evening sky
December 22, 2018

 
 As
            the full moon rose this evening, I set out to capture not only
            the moon rise, but the 3.6 magnitude comet Wirtanen near Capella
            in Auriga. The primary reason of this shot was to do that plus
            check out a new optical shaft encoder for the barndoor mount
            that I had just finished 3D printing. That works great. Here
            is a one minute exposure with the 17mm lens set for f/4 for the
            primary image, and zoomed into 40mm for the inset.


            


            
 Click
            here for a larger 1400 sized image

Lens:  17-40mm Canon L Lens
Platform:  Robotic Barndoor Mount
Camera: Canon Xti
Exposure:  1m
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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