Comet Lemmon on 6th Feb

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Hi all,

I drove about 45 minutes south west of Brisbane last night in search of darker skies to capture this comet. Very easily spotted in 7x50 binoculars from where I ended up. I was using a tripod-mounted Canon 50D and EF 70-200mm telephoto lens, but the comet's closeness to the south celestial pole allowed me to expose for 30 secs without too much trailing. I tried various settings, but ended up stacking 11x30 sec exposures at 200mm, f/4 and 1600 iso (plus 3 darks) using DSS, and then cropping the image a bit. The result is fairly noisy (as expected), but I was able to pick up a hint of the tail (in the 11 o'clock position).

Anyway, thanks for looking.

Cheers,
Stephen

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Nice one Stephen!

Must suck having to drive that far to find some dark skies.

Cheers,

Justin.

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Thanks Justin! It's a bit of a hassle having to drive in search of darker skies, but the effort is worth it when there's something of interest in the sky.

Cheers,
Stephen

[gregbradley]

Nice job.

I imaged this myself last night finally restarting up my CDK17 after quite a hiatus. Thanks to those who posted its approaximate location I sent the scope there and viola there it was in the frame! I thought it might be a struggle to find it. Its quite bright.

Do you know if its moving towards the sun or away from it? Jan/Feb must be comet month as last year this time of year we had 2 comets also.

Greg.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Nice image, Stephen!

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Do you know if its moving towards the sun or away from it? Jan/Feb must be comet month as last year this time of year we had 2 comets also.

Greg.

Astronomy Australia 2013 lists Comet Lemmon reaching perihelion on 24th March 2013.

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Thanks guys!

Here's a single frame which also caught a passing satellite!

Originally Posted by Shark Bait

Astronomy Australia 2013 lists Comet Lemmon reaching perihelion on 24th March 2013.

That's correct, so it will continue brightening for a few more weeks hopefully!

Cheers,
Stephen

[anthony.tony]

Nice work - Tony.

[astronobob (Bob)]

Nice one Steve, I was out south of Beaudessert last night, but found high altitude thin stratas cloud between the main cloud, didnt get onto it at all really ! Great too see how its captured with the 70-200, which was what I had, so maybe next time !
Nice image !