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11.7 Degree tail
Hi Everyone,
Another brilliant morning here on the Manawatu Plains west of Palmerston North. I'm still pinching myself that this beautiful weather has coincided with this amazing display. Apart from Mcnaught in Jan 2007 when we had the cloudiest Jan in 82 years, we've been very lucky over the years with comets, and eclipses!
I got up about 3.10 a.m. local time. I walked around the side of the house to get a clear view and there it was. About 5 degrees of tail already sticking up. I gathered up all my cameras and drove about a km down the road to where I knew I could at least place a tree in my pics (dairy farmers around here adopt a bit of a scorched earth policy when it comes to trees near the road. Either none or too many!).
The four pics attached were taken with either my Fuji Finepix S9500 or a loaned Canon EOS 10D which I have used for the first time this morning, and so I'm still getting used to it (not a great time to be learning).
This looks more and more like a fainter, smaller version of Ikeya-Seki everyday. I grew up on photos of that famous sun-grazer, and now each morning this week I get up and see his little brother!
The first exposure with the 10D was 30 secs on ISO 1600. The 3rd shot is with the S9500, 20 secs, ISO 400.
No doubt we will see a lot better images quite soon.
Cheers, Coops.
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