New Image: 12P / Pons-Brooks
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 5:46 pm
I finally had all of winter that I could handle. On Monday I took the cover off my dome and opened the observatory for the new year. My first target for 2024 was 12P/Pons-Brooks. The target proved to be both easier and more difficult than I imagined. It was easy because all I had to do was enter the RA /Dec into the telescope, wait for the sky to darken, and there it was!
It was difficult because by the time the sky was dark enough to locate the comet and focus on it with my camera it was only about 20 degrees above the horizon and less than that above the trees. The comet was diffused with a magnitude of 8.63. I had about 20 minutes to capture whatever I was going to capture. I wanted at least two shots to confirm movement.
I tossed all the rules of good photography out the window (which is fairly common for me) and came away with the following two pictures taken 14 minutes apart.
Telescope: C11at 2800mm focal length / Camera: Cannon 80D / ISO 16,000 (NOT 1600!) / Exposure: 15 sec. (1st pic) & 20 sec (2nd pic) / Date: 02/12/2024 / Time: 19:03 CST (1st pic) & 19:17 CST (2nd pic).
It was difficult because by the time the sky was dark enough to locate the comet and focus on it with my camera it was only about 20 degrees above the horizon and less than that above the trees. The comet was diffused with a magnitude of 8.63. I had about 20 minutes to capture whatever I was going to capture. I wanted at least two shots to confirm movement.
I tossed all the rules of good photography out the window (which is fairly common for me) and came away with the following two pictures taken 14 minutes apart.
Telescope: C11at 2800mm focal length / Camera: Cannon 80D / ISO 16,000 (NOT 1600!) / Exposure: 15 sec. (1st pic) & 20 sec (2nd pic) / Date: 02/12/2024 / Time: 19:03 CST (1st pic) & 19:17 CST (2nd pic).