Taken in bright moonlight and bad LP in the hours before dawn on Feb 10, 2017. 45P is so dim that it barely showed up in the sub-images. I almost thought I was not in the right place. Luckily, I kept the scope pointed at that spot and kept shooting images until daylight.
BTW, the image above appears in Wikipedia for the entry on comet 45P/Honda–Mrkos–Pajdušáková.
I had time for just a quick peek at Comet Johnson before moving on to my main target, Comet 45P. It was not at an optimum spot and ISO 400 maxed out at 60 sec exposures with all the LP and moonlight. So, it was not very deep and has noise and low color. But, at least I can see that not much has changed since the last time I shot it. This is supposed to be the next photogenic comet, coming this summer to a sky right above you. 🙂
Here’s Comet Encke on Jan 29, 2017. I imaged it two years ago when it last came around. On this night it was very low in a very bad LP zone right above bright parking lot lights and street lights. I’m surprised anything even registered. As you can see, it was small and dim and almost, but not quite, swallowed up by the LP. 🙁
Another Comet Johnson image. It seems to be a bit brighter than last time, but not much bigger. Eventually, it should get more photogenic as it gets closer to Earth and the Sun..
I’ve finally bagged a new comet after almost 2 years since I shot my last one, which was Comet Lovejoy. This one is small and dim at the moment, but it has a neat tail.
Comet Johnson is predicted to get better with the best views coming this summer. So far, it looks like it will be an easy target for the next few months. I’ll probably get more images of this one as it develops.
A closer pairing of Comet Lovejoy and the Little Dumbbell Nebula on the night of Feb 20, 2015, plus another tail disruption event was in progress.
The last significant encounter with another Messier object for Comet Lovejoy Q2 before it dims down more and moonlight eventually spoils the view. The best part of the apparition is about over. From now on, the comet will get fainter as it recedes from Earth and heads back out into deep space.
Its has been a fun time imaging this bright comet over the last two months. I had good public exposure with 2 news organizations publishing two of my images, one of them being NBCNews.com. Hopefully, another bright comet will soon appear and put on another show for us. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. 🙂
Looks like the disconnection event over the last two days has shortened Lovejoy down to a nub. I expect that it might grow back a new tail, hopefully.
Here’s an another version of the data, but I added 35 minutes more of exposure to the mix:
The nearly disconnected tail of Lovejoy blowing in the solar wind. Something in the local space environment disrupted it within the last 2 days, it seems. Probably some kind of solar event like a CME or rogue magnetic field change caused this.