Comet Lovejoy 23-12-11

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Beautiful, Lester! Best I've seen. I drove an hour to the south coast in the early hours, only to find the sky almost completely clouded out.

[Lester]

Thanks Dan and Graeme for your comments. I have been fortunate to have relatively clear skies, tonight doesn't look too promising, but 3 a.m is still a long way off.

Bad luck on the cloud Graeme, would north be a better direction than south to get less cloud? My thinking would be the northern direction would yeild a much lower annual rainfall than south, so perhaps less cloud. I use to have an uncle that farmed near Snowtown and he copped some nasty droughts.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by Lester

Thanks Malcolm, Dave, Humayun and Trevor for your comments.

Dave, yes it would be visible from Brisbane, so long as you don't have too much light pollution to the south east with a clear horizon. Exposure will depend on camera and lens used. If you can get an image with 10-20 seconds using a lens of about 50mm, that will not trail the image too much. If your camera doesn't produce too much noise try mid to high ISO settings.

All the best.

Thanks Lester. Will be using a 60D (pretty good high ISO), remote, tripod and 50mm (I have both the f1.8 and f1.4 variants of this lens, will prolly use the 1.4). How does f2.8, 20 secs, ISO 800 sound? I'd love to capture some of the tail tendrils, but I suspect my exposure would have to be too long to really do this without tracking :/

Dave

[Lester]

Hi Dave, use the F1.4 lens, and you could get away with ISO 1600, I use that on my 40D and it handles it well. I would even try the lens wide open to limit your exposure length and minimise trailing. You could always crop off the edges of the image in processing if the stars look like seagulls. My image was 1 minute exposure at F3.2 and ISO 800 with the 20Da, so the equivalant exposure at ISO 1600 and F1.4 would be, just under 6 seconds. Try that and check the results on the screen on the camera. If you want crisper stars in the edges try F2 and 12 seconds exposure.

I will be keen to hear your results. All the best.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by Lester

Hi Dave, use the F1.4 lens, and you could get away with ISO 1600, I use that on my 40D and it handles it well. I would even try the lens wide open to limit your exposure length and minimise trailing. You could always crop off the edges of the image in processing if the stars look like seagulls. My image was 1 minute exposure at F3.2 and ISO 800 with the 20Da, so the equivalant exposure at ISO 1600 and F1.4 would be, just under 6 seconds. Try that and check the results on the screen on the camera. If you want crisper stars in the edges try F2 and 12 seconds exposure.

I will be keen to hear your results. All the best.

Well, now I need clear skies. It seems that Brisbane won't have clear skies until Monday at least

Dave

[firstlight (Tony)]

Spectacular... I agree with Humayun, the first looks better. Sooo much rain and cloud around here in Brisbane.

[michael_sa]

Stunning shot Lester. Well done.
I'm hoping to catch a glimpse in the morning so long as the cloud stays away.

Michael

[Lester]

Thanks Tony and Michael for your comments. Hope you and Dave can get a good view of this chap soon.

All the best.

[John Hothersall]

Just Brilliant!!!

John.

[midnight (Darrin)]

Lost for words Lester. Apod grade.

Brilliant.

Darrin...

[kinetic (Steve)]

Congrats Lester, the shot is now on Spaceweather.com!

Steve

[Lester]

Thanks John, Darrin and Steve for your comments.

All the best.

I had to upgrade from the free version of photobucket this morning to photobucket Pro. The image had over 1,000 viewings yesterday which closed down the image. All working now okay.