I didn't actually realise until last night that this comet was an entirely different one to the one I saw last year. And the one I saw last year I thought I saw just before Christmas. Nope. October!! I'm losing my mind.
I went out on Wednesday night (22/1) at maybe 20:30. Way too bright. But did meet up with Rob and Lynne and so we hung out together to wait for it to get dark.
My G5X picked it up first a bit after nine. But I'm blind and the screen is so tiny I couldn't see it. The phone could see it around 21:14. Well, that's when it was bright enough for me to zoom and in and find the little smudge so we knew where to look.
I managed to get a few photos on the G5X before it got so dark it had not enough contrast to focus.
Another shot on the phone
I also had a go on the 600D. My ~12-13 year old camera that I inherited from Dad in 2014. That has, as I discovered, many dead pixels. It also had trouble focussing in the dark, so set to manual focus and was able to get some shots.
This one was 20 seconds - star trails!
On Friday 24/1 Tony said he hadn't seen it yet, so we headed up Mt Rogers to get a different view. Turns out city lights, while annoying for astro photography, also give cameras something to focus on.
Once again I was able to use the phone to figure out exactly where to look. Here's a couple of shots on the phone.
And those lights gave the G5X something to focus on, so got the rest of the photos of the night on that.
Bug trails!! And by bug trails I mean Elon's space junk #grunt
Fun times!
Oh, I forgot to link to this.. lyra_lightchaser's spectacular photo of it streaming off the top of Black Mountain Tower!
Comments