Comet Holmes Comet in extreme outburst

Uploaded 10/24/07

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 There has never been a comet quite like this one. This image, taken during the nearly full moon shows a comet exhibiting an explosive outburst, normally at 17th magnitude which has jumped to 2.8 or so. Seen as a naked eye tawny star in Perseus, this fall splendor was only a few arc minutes in diamter and resembled the appearance of a planetary nebula with a strong leaden yellow coloration in the longer exposures.

This image is a stack of many exposures to keep the core from blowing out, which happens on anything over about 5 seconds exposure. More on this one comming!

Lens: 12.5" f/5 Newtonian Platform: Astrophysics AP1200 Camera: Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO400 Exposure: 10m+60s,30s,15s,8s,4s,2s,1s Filters: Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 8/10, Transparency 6/10 Outside Temperature: 60F Processing Tools: Photoshop CS2, Maxim DSLR HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS