Last night (March 1st) I repeated the exercise that I had gone through on the previous night (see my post "Ten Years After"). This time the result is even more similar to ten years ago because there is no moonlight!
The top shot was from Feb 28th 2003 showing Comet C/2002 V1 NEAT. I had to place myself and tripod in front of my neighbours front hedge and fence to shelter from a stiff easterly breeze that night. The photo details are; Nikon F with a 50mm lens @ f/1.4 15 seconds on Fuji Xtra 400 film, taken at 8.22 U.T.
Last night the easterly sprang up again so the shelter was necessary once more. Taken with my Canon 450D 35mm lens @f/4.5 15 seconds on ISO 1600 at 8.18 hrs U.T.
The similarities are quite remarkable!
As soon as I finished I ran back to my equatorial platform and swapped lenses to capture Pan-STARRS in a darker sky, but because it is moving northward as well as westward each night, by the time that I had myself set up the head was disappearing behind the roof of my house. What the photo does show is that I picked up the gas tail in this slightly out of focus image.
The high cloud in the bottom of the wide shot has now spread all over us and it may be a struggle to get tonight but the rest of the week looks promising for us so watch this space. My mate George Ionas got a good shot from in town (Palmerston North is about a 30 minute drive east of me) which he has posted in another thread on this Forum.
