Comet Machholz and the Pleiades (M45)

Excellent shot. Looks like The Kingdom 2 - The Rest 0

I had a look outside earlier and didn't think I would bother setting up. I'm not sure that the comet will go close enough to The Pleiades for my 200mm lens. Here's hoping!

I don't think this comet will have an impressive tail. Certainly nothing like Hale-Bopp and my family never even noticed that one until I pointed it out.

Thanks for the comments.

Michael (O'C) I focus with the lens set at manual focus through the viewfinder of the camera with pointed to a bright star. Then l take a test shot and see from there. On the 18-55 lens I auto focused at a distant object in daylight both at 18mm and at 55mm focal lengths and placed a pair of dots to allow me to line up the focus at both extreems. Unfortunetly the infinity focus point varies with focal length.

I am just back from darker skies but as expected the clouds beat me to it.

Seánie, I must have a look at the negative image. Certainly in James' image I think that the tail is more noticable in the negative.

Michael S. KAC/SAC

Dear Friends,

I was out earlier tonight doing some testing with my EOS 300d at the prime focus of my TeleVue Pronto with everything piggy-backed onto a C14-G11.

www.astrovox.gr/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=370

I will be doing additional testing tomorrow using my EOS lenses with 200 mm for tomorrow and 250 mm for Friday (did some FOV computations and these are the optimal focal lengths).

I will provide a follow-up report.

Clear skies to all.

Anthony.

PS. These EOS 300d cameras are killer astroimagers! It is quite amazing the amount of sharp detail that one capture with simple and single 30-sec exposures (even unprocessed).[/url]

Michael, JS,
Thats a great picture, it would be great to get follow up pictures and show its movement over the next few days, weather premitting.

Anthony,
Great shots anthony, I wish I had your skies.

Following Seánies prompting I stacked three other 30 second exposures in Registax 3. I did nothing with the wavelets filters but used the histogram functions to reduce the red skyglow and darken the background.



I then made a negative of a portion of this and adjusted the gamma. In both the two tails are just visible at the 5 o'clock position and the longer one at 8 o'clock. The nebulosity in the Pleides is also noticeable!



I still caught another satellite between it and the Pleiades.

Michael Scully KAC

Michael, Anthony, great shots! I am especially impressed with the negative image showing both the tails and the neblosity from within the pleiades!!

Keith..