Comet Tuttle & M33
The Close Encounter of Two Celestial Showpieces
7:02 PM MST on December 30th, 2007

 

            
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 When
            a bright naked eye comet with an emerald green color passes a
            richly detailed blue spiral galaxy, the sight is breathtaking.
            The comet sprouts a long thin ion tail which you will see best
            in the larger images. The comet is now about 5th magnitude, and
            near the limit of naked eye detection from our backyard skies
            here in Payson. While M33 reveals small HII regions in pink,
            and blue stellar associations, the comet is rather featureless,
            and displays only larger scale features.
Lens:  Stellarvue SV80s at f/4.7
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200  (Piggyback on 12.5")
Camera:  Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO800
Exposure:  45 x 2m Continuous dual stream
Filters:  
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  8/10, Transparency 9/10
Outside Temperature:  30F
Processing Tools:  Photoshop CS2, Maxim DSLR, PixInsight Pro
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