GUEST COMETS ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY Last updated: 31 January 2007

Some ETX users have sent me examples of their astrophotography. If you have some examples you would like included here please send me a description of how you made the astrophotos and a copy of the images as GIF or JPEG files (due to internet email gateway issues, please send only one image file per message). Send to etx@me.com. Alternatively, if you have created your own web page with your examples please let me know and I'll include a link to your site.

Submitted by: Luis O' Conor (luisoconor@medilabsrl.com.ar) [31 Jan 07]
I send you my firsts astrophotos I take in my life. It was taken in the night of 01/18/07 from Rosario, provincia de Santa Fe, Rep. Argentina with a Canon 300 D - 75 - 300 mm. zoom.
Submitted by: Jim Beston (james.beston@btinternet.com) [22 Jan 07]
Imagine my suprise and frustration to discover, whilst on holiday and away from my telescopes in the UK, that the brightest comet for decades was in the sky! I was alerted to its presence by a phone call claiming that "something was falling from the sky into the sea"! From our Guest house, Green Gables in Strand, near Cape Town in South Africa, I managed to get a few photos using my wife's Fuji finepix Z3 I hope this one is of interest. Of course it does little justice to such a magnificent sight.
Submitted by: Bill Farmakidis (AUS99A@HOTMAIL.COM) [22 Jan 07]
Had to send you a photo taken from the southern suburbs of Sydney near The Georges River on the night of 19 January 2007. Canon 30D & 75-300 zoom ISO 400 f8 @ 4secs. Just can't seem to get enough of C2006 P1 - it is truly something to behold.
Submitted by: Steve (rabbitsr@tpg.com.au) [18 Jan 07]
Its been a long time since I visited your site as I had to sell my ETX 125, but happily, I now have a new one... :-) But this image wasn't taken with a Meade, but a Nikon D70 with a 300mm zoom lens with the exposure set on auto, but I'm thinking that the exposure was around the 1/2 sec. It was taken from North Fremantle, Western Australia from a hill overlooking the Indian Ocean on the 17/01/2007. Its starting to get fainter as time go's by, so maybe the ETX125 may have to be used very soon....:-)
Submitted by: Dieter Wolf (testdwolf@hotmail.com) [12 Jan 07]
Yesterday evening - still at work - I 'grabbed with both hands' the opportunity to see the first comet after Hale-Bopp with an impressive, naked-eye visible tail: I climbed the roof of our company building after sunset and watched the sky. Venus was bright but lots of quick moving clouds. Then I saw C2006 P1 McNaught. Very close to the horizon but bright - I would say somewhere around -1m - a coma and a long dust tail (about 1 degree). A small binocular (8x25) gave the same impression. Then I took a few pictures with a digital camera. Got it! 10 minutes later it ended up in large clouds. 2007-01-10, 17:24 CET, Kodak EasyShare (4mp, ISO400, f/3.6, 360mm, 1/10s out of the hand after taking a deep breeze out) ...and a digitally magnified, hard contrast enhanced detail view. One try - one success; today it's cloudy and after perihelion tomorrow the comet will no longer be visible on northern skies. It was not Hale-Bopp but the nicest one afterwards. Nothing to do with ETX, but maybe you'll post it nevertheless - thank you Mike.
Submitted by: Niall J. Saunders (niall@njs101.com) [12 Jan 07]
I decided that the clear skies were 'good enough' - and that I would never make it back home in time, and so I nipped out of the office yesterday afternoon and drove up to the back of the industrial estate where I work. Venus was easily visible and - using 'the comet is two outstretched hand-widths to the right of Venus, at the same elevation in the evening, western, sky' rule that I had memorised from the previous evening - the cheapest and nastiest pair of binoculars soon had me able to reference the comet in the sky to objects on the horizon. At this time the sky was still too bright for the comet to be visible to the naked eye, but I could at least now throw my trusty old Olympus C-8080WZ (non-dslr) onto my wobbly tripod and get things pointed in the right direction. After all, isn't preparation everything? (Yes, it is - but that didn't help explain why BOTH of the rechargeable batteries I had for the camera were almost totally flat !!) I bracketed off a few shots - in full manual mode, at f/8 (to try and avoid any possible focus issues) but nothing was visible on either the rear LCD screen, or the internal electronic viewfinder. I was working initially with digital zoom on, then dropped that to work purely at an equivalent FL of around 100mm, focused manually at infinity. Exposure times were around 1/4 to 1.5 seconds, using the Ir remote shutter release. (I regretted not having brought my Olympus E- 500 DSLR - with its 300mm lens, or even using the DSLR on my Moonfish 80mmED at 600mm eq. FL). Ten minutes later though, my eyes had adapted to the deepening twilight, and the comet started to become easily visible to the naked eye. Half a dozen more shots and I had a little streak of confidence appearing on the reviewed shots. Ten minutes after that - and the show was over!. The western horizon had clouds rolling in (we had an evil night of wind and rain, and this was obviously the storm clouds arriving !!). So, here is the result - I am happy enough with the outcome, and am thoroughly delighted with my new-found hobby of 'daytime comet watching'
Submitted by: Paul Campbell (iamzoup@yahoo.com) [12 Jan 07]
Here is a photo of comet McNaught from this evening (01/08/07). Dan Mckeel took this photo using a canon 300d with a 300mm lens mounted on a tripod. This is a single frame image 1/6 of a sec. 800 ISO at f/5. He sent me the raw image and I ran it through registax 4 photoshop 9.0 photofilter and noiseware. we hope you enjoy

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See Comet photos from 2006 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet photos from 2005 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet photos from 2004 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet photos from 2003 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet photos from 2002 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet photos from 2001 at the Guest Astrophotography - Comets page.

See Comet Hale-Bopp photos at the Guest Astrophotography - Comet Hale-Bopp page.

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