Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner is a short period comet of the Jupiter family.
This year’s apparition is quite favourable, as it places the comet in the evning sky. Best visibility should be around September 11th, where it should almost become naked eye visible. In binoculars or a telescope it is already a nice view. I observed it with the 127mm refractor, where it visually showed a short tail. Read More
Comet C/2015 V2 (Johnson), 10x30s, ISO 3200, F4, 300mm, Nikon D750, Vixen Polarie.
These days Comet Johnson is very conveniently placed in the evening sky for northern observers.
The image above is a crop of the one below. Read More
The Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák is passing through the constellation Ursa Major these nights.
66×30″, ISO1600, 300mm f/4, Nikon D750, Skywatcher Star Adventurer, Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Lightroom.
66×30″, ISO1600, 300mm f/4, Nikon D750, Skywatcher Star Adventurer, Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Lightroom. Crop from the image above.
This animation created from the individual frames used for the image above, shows the movement of Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák against the starry Background. The time-span of the animation is 36 minutes between 19:09 and 19:45 UT on the evening of March, 25th.
Today I got up at 4:30 to drive up to the Bödele, a nearby mountain pass. Luckily the weather predictions was right and the sky turned out to be very clear.
Again I used the 70-200mm zoom lens at 200mm, the Vixen Polarie was used for tracking.
Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina, 30×30″, ISO 3200, f/4, Nikon D750, 70-200 f/4
This morning I grabbed the camera and mount and headed right up to the roof before breakfast. My socks were freezing on the hoarfrost, and it was quite cold in my T-Shirt, but then while the camera was happily snapping away at Comet Catalina I was comfortably eating breakfast.
This is a crop from the original image, 27 individual frames were combined using Andreas Roerig’s software Regim, additional processing was done in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
On December 11th I updated the images, as I found out the de-bayering in Regim was configured wrong, also I applied different settings for gradient removal, resulting in a background with less artefacts, I also included 10 more frames for a total of 27 sub-exposures.
In the inverted version the visible tail is 4,4° long.
27x30s, Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200 f/4, Vixen Polarie, processid in Regim, Photoshop and Lightroom
On the morning of December 7th Venus and Comet Catalina got close to each other in eastern sky.
Another bright Comet Lovejoy with the designation C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy is grazing our skies these days.
The comet’s path takes it north next to the constellation of Orion, making it conveniently placed for nothern hemisphere observers.
Yesterday’s sky was a bit hazy as the temperature dropped quickly and humidity condensed in the air, additionally light pollution creates a bad gradient in the west of my home.
33x30s, 200mm, f/4, Nikon AF Nikkor 70-200 f/4, Nikon D7000, Polarie, processed in Lightroom (Clarity & Saturation), Photoshop (Levels and Curves), Deep-Sky Stacker (dark, flat, registration and stacking) and Regim (Gradient removal)
combination of 15 60s exposures of Comet Lovejoy C/2013 R1, Nikon D7000, AstroProfessional 80mm f/6 ED (560mm f.l.)
On November 17th I decided at 1:00 to try to take some pictures of comet ISON before it’s rendezvous with the sun.
To get above the fog in the Rhine valley I drove up a still-open (normally closed in winter) mountain pass.
I arrived early at the Furkajoch (a mountain pass in Vorarlberg), so I had the chance to take some pictures of the alpine landscape and of comet Lovejoy.
The full moon and a thin layer of high cirrus cloud made the process of locating and imaging the comet difficult.
Read More
It looks as if 2013 will be a good year for comets. This spring Comet Panstarrs is visible in the darkening sky after Sunset and in December comet ISON should put up an even more impressive show.