Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4
Comet in North Eastern sky before sunrise
For Sunday, April 21st, 2013

Uploaded 4/21/13

 

            
 The pursuit
            of comets has always taken me places and moved my progress along
            in a mostly forward fashion. This morning was a mess however!
            After spending over an hour trying to get the computer to recognize
            any of the CCD cameras and failing, I finally put the DSLR on
            the 12.5" scope and took some quick frames. The sky was
            already starting to turn blue as you can see from this shot,
            as I had passed into a bit of twilight. But at least now Ill
            be able to get the comet with the observatory instrument for
            some deep shots as it heads out of the solar system.

            
This shot not only
            shows the fan tail, but also the nearly solar pointing spike
            that has been so predominant in this object. The image is tracked
            on the comets very faint nuclear region, so the stars are slightly
            trailed as the comet moved a small amount. The comet is going
            to be leaving Cassiopeia soon and the moon is full in a few days.

            
Turns out the laptop
            cant have a mouse at the same time as the CCD cameras. The track
            pad fortunately works fine!



            

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Lens:  12.5" f/5 Newtonian Astrograph with Canon XTi / Hutech modified camera
Platform:  Televue GEM
Exposure:  4 min 
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  42F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DSLR, Photoshop CS2

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