I took a few 30mm photos with the Nikon D200 last night before moonrise. 11 in total, but Registax doesnt seem to want to let me stack them all, so here is the stack of 6 * 30sec exposures. I was in and out of the house, and it was bit bright inside due to visitors, so I wasn't fully dark adapted, and could not make it out naked eye in the few brief tries I made.
It's looking like a fair bit of cloud will be aorund over the next week, so that may have been my last go at it.
Good pic there. It sure shows how faint it now is. Its odd behaiviour for a comet as normally the tail dissapears leaving just the coma when they move away from the Sun, Lovejoy still has a fairly long tail, just that it's surface brightness is very low.
Scott
Thanks Scott, yours turned out quite well too, not sure I want to spend so long tracking on it myself though I'll try some 85mm photos if I get some clear sky in the next week.
I think the behaviour is fairly typical of comets that disintegrate- just a streak of coma left with no condensation- just that C/Lovejoy lost so much more material in a short time than most comets, so the tail was much larger, but there is nothing left to replenish it now.
I'm not sure Liz, I haven't seen any pics of it taken in the past few weeks... do you know of any online?
I saw one the other am per the comets Yahoo group, Gordon, that Rolano Ligustri had taken. The tails looked looked amazing with one at ....9pm, and other 1pm (not sure how to properly put that).
Just checked Stellarium and Comet Garradd is presently in Herculus loooow in the east but still too light, maybe another couple of weeks as skies darken, and Herculus climbs a bit higher. : )
Thanks Liz, those great photos show the yellow dust tail fan, spread out in the plane of the orbit, and the blue ion tail pointing away from the Sun, it's looked similar to that for a little while now, quite pretty. Unfortunately, I wont be seeing it any time soon, as it is heading to the far northern sky and wont reappear here until about the start of April on its way south again.
I'll try some 85mm photos if I get some clear sky in the next week.
