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 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS