2003-03-01:

After an evening of testing our club’s new DMK21AU04.AS camera in Manfred Böhler’s observaory, I set up my equipment at home to use the clear sky to do another picture of comet Lulin before the clouds and the moon spoil the show:

This is an animation created from the 6 individual images used for the composite above, it shows the movement of the comet agains the background stars:

2009-02-26:

After waiting in vain the whole evening for the sky to clear, I went to bed. But I was not sleeping too well, and when I awoke at 03:00 am, I saw some starst through our bedroom window. I grabbed my 15×50 binoculars and easily found Comet Lulin below the constellation of Leo, with the 15×50 the tail was easily visible, even through the suburban sky that I have at home.

I managed to get myself dressed and set up the Super Polaris mount on our roof, and managed to get the following images. I stopped imaging when clouds rolled in. At 4:30 I was back in bed, only to get up for real at 06:00 – yawn!

If you move the mouse over the image you will see an annotated version with some stars identified.