Comet Leonard

[jon.s]

Comet Leonard, shot in the early morning hours on Thursday December 9.

We’ve been in a long cloudy stretch in southern Ontario since mid November. With no signs of any crystal clear sky in the forecast in the pre-dawn hours and the window for shooting Comet Leonard closing fast, Dec 9 could be my last chance, despite the less-than-ideal forecast with below-average to poor transparency. I monitored the forecast and local conditions (i.e. backyard) through the day and night and when the promised partial clearing didn’t materialize, at 2 am I resigned to the idea that I wouldn’t be shooting Comet Leonard, and went to bed, except that I couldn’t sleep. At 2:30 am I got out of bed and took another look - the sky cleared up! Instant mad dash to load up the car and drive out of the city for darker skies.

I finished setting up and started imaging at 5 am. Clouds continued to drift in and out of view and in the end I got about 20 minutes of usable data instead of the 1.5-hour of good data I had hoped for. The poor transparency also obscured part of the coma and the tail. Nevertheless, it is an image of Comet Leonard that I can call my own.

[Ylem]

That's awesome Jonathan! A fine capture

[AstroBee]

Congrats. That's a beauty!

[messier 111]

very nice capture , thx .

[Butterfly Maiden]

A beautiful capture. Well done.

[jon.s]

Thank you @Butterfly Maiden @messier 111 @AstroBee @Ylem !

[Michael131313]

Despite your issues you produced a very very nice image. Thanks for showing it to us.

[Big_Eight]

Holy crap that's a great photo! Thanks for sharing!

[Gordon]

Congratulations Jon on having your image selected as todays TSS APOD!

app.php/article/12-14-2021-tss-astropho ... of-the-day

[Makuser]

Hi Jon. Even with the poor transparency you still came away with a very nice Comet Leonard image. Excellent contrast and a real beauty to view. Thanks for sharing your work with us on here Jon and congratulations on receiving the TSS APOD Award today.

[helicon]

Looks great. And congrats on nabbing the APOD for the day!

[starfield]

That's a beauty. Thanks for sharing.

[OzEclipse]

Hi Jon,
Great shot and congratulations on the well-deserved APOD.

Could you tell us about the image scale(lens FL, camera sensor, and is it cropped) and exposure details.

It's just coming into view in the southern hemisphere.

Joe

[jon.s]

Thank you all! Honoured to receive the APOD!

[jon.s]

Hi Jon,
Great shot and congratulations on the well-deserved APOD.

Could you tell us about the image scale(lens FL, camera sensor, and is it cropped) and exposure details.

It's just coming into view in the southern hemisphere.

Joe

Thanks Joe. My setup: Canon T4i full-spectrum mod with UV-IR cut filter, and 300 mm f/4L lens. Image scale is 4.37 arc-sec per pixel and this is cropped - approximately 50% in each dimension. I estimated that the tail to be about one degree long in my image (should have been much longer on Dec 9 if it were not for the poor transparency). Now that the comet is quite a bit closer to the sun, twilight will likely mask most of the tail.

Exposure was ISO 3200, f/4, 30 seconds. Comet Leonard moves fast in the sky hence the short exposure.

Best of luck with your imaging!

Jonathan