Celestron C-8 Schmidt-Cassegrain (Original Mount)
Meade SN6 Schmidt-Newtonian
Image Gallery for March, 2013
Comet Pan-STARRS March 25, 2013
Ok, I managed to get a shot of Comet Panstarrs despite the moon and lingering twilight. At least you see the comet. Somewhat. lol
It was a little difficult to shoot images and entertain visitors simultaneously. Its a long story, but suffice it to say that by the time I was finally shooting images, the comet was already deep in the muck. In fact, it was there by the time it got dark enough to shoot long exposures.
Oh, well… at least I didn’t scratch. 🙂
Orion’s Belt and Sword
I was just playing around here. The nearly full moon was so bright that it allowed only very short exposures.
The Pleiades and Comet C/2012 L2 (LINEAR)
I struck out trying to image Comet Panstarrs on Sunday evening, March 24, 2013. It was just too short of a time to find it in bright twilight, bright moonlight and with its low altitude. However, I tried something to redeem myself while I still had the equipment setup. I shot the Pleiades with a bunch of 15 second unguided exposures. I managed to catch them and Comet C/2012 L2 (Linear) in the shot. This is cropped down quite a bit to just the cluster and comet.
By the way, the comet is in the lower right. Its that small greenish smudge. 🙂
A Comet in the Clouds
It was predicted to be clear on March 20, 2013 when I took the above picture. However, a low bank of clouds moved in at the last moment and messed up my plans to shoot Comet Pan-STARRS with the Canon 200mm F/2.8 telephoto lens for a wide-angle view. The mount wasn’t tracking very well, either and I wasted quite a few shots because of that issue. So, the only good image of the comet came through a crack in the clouds.
Comet C/2011 L4 (Panstarrs)
A more formal presentation of the image data I captured the evening of March 16, 2013 (Mar 17, UT.)
Comet Panstarrs – March 16, 2013
This image of the comet was a lucky catch between cloud bands. There’s still some haze even in this shot, but you can see the comet and its tail well enough to make it worthwhile. I took a quite a few images, but most had clouds in it. The few that had the least clouds around the comet I copied just the comet and blended it in as a luminosity layer in PS.
So, the comet parts of 4 other 4-sec images, 15 other 2-sec images and a base 4-sec image is what I had and I did what I could to make it half-presentable. I could have totally scratched and not got anything, so I’m pretty happy with just this. Clouds are predicted for the next few days, so this might have been my last image of the comet until the moon is out of the sky.