On Friday evening, March 31st (April 1st in Universal Time) I drove out to a dark sky site and got as many images of Comet 41P as I could. 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak was closest to Earth on this day and I was hoping I could document the encounter.
I ended up with 80 good sub-images out of about 100. Unfortunately, I had guiding problems, equipment issues and mount troubles. A bad connection on my new battery pack kept me from starting until I re-rigged it and during the night the mount kept making knocking noises and jerking in RA, making lines instead of star points every 5 to 10 sub-images. I’ll have to figure that one out, since it never did that before.
At least it was very dark and transparent. I was camera noise limited and not LP limited for my exposures. It was kind of weird to shoot 7 minute subs and see that I still had a ways to go before mid-histogram. I wish it was like that every time. lol