I'd been mostly thwarted by clouds in my attempts to view and
photograph Comet Lovejoy leading up to christmas. It finally cleared on christmas morning, but with three young kids I couldn't head out to photograph it - and then we went on holidays the next day.
It wasn't until the last day of 2011 that I was able to get up early and head out to photograph the comet from our holiday place at
Kioloa Beach, which by now had risen higher in the sky, grew a long tail that was almost 30 degrees long, but had also faded considerable compared to the brightest views from the 24th-26th December.
So unfortunately it's not the best image you'll find of the Comet, but at least I was able to finally capture it - and here are the results. What's "the Emu"? It's the
emu shape formed by the dark patches of sky and bulge of the milky way around this part of the sky.
The first image is a single 60 second exposure taken with a Canon 40D and Sigma 17-70mm lens, ISO1600, f/2.8.
The second image is a single 30 second exposure. Same setup.
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Large image 1
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Large image 2
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Thanks for looking.