Comet
Taken by Mark Seibold on January 14, 2015 @
Sandy Oregon
Click photo for larger image
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Camera Used: SONY NEX-5
Exposure Time: 87/1
Aperture: f/1.0
ISO: 400
Date Taken: 2015:01:15 06:38:40
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Details:
Comet Lovejoy [discovered by Terry Lovejoy in August 2014 in Australia] now appears to be passing by the famed Pleiades M45 star cluster and just west of the Hyades star cluster in Taurus. * A possible meteor trail is seen to be transiting the nucleus of the comet. *Perhaps 6 ~ 8 degrees of the comets tail is visible in this photograph.
*Technical:
An 87 second time exposure was made through a Sony NEX5 with the artist-astronomers 42 year old Mamiya/Sekor 55mm f/1.4 lens from his college days, set at f/2 - the lens is adapted to the newer digital camera. ISO 400, and equatorial auto-tracking atop a Celestron Nexstar 5i Cassegrain telescope. A single photographic image not noise stacked; post processed in Adobe Creative Cloud- Adobe Camera Raw.
The evening was hurried, as high thin clouds approached and the comet and sky region in the photo moved to the western sky and into considerable light polluted haze in the final moments of this last exposure of the evening, accounting for some bizarre sky colors that only seems to enhance the reality of this scene. Windy at times with gusts to 20 ~ 25 mph and 39 degrees .
On an East Sandy Oregon rural residential road, passersby came and went, as many people stopped to ask how to see the comet. So I instructed several people as to how to read their star charts and use binoculars if they did not have a telescope. One lady who stopped at about 10:30 pm, got out of her car, as I handed my binoculars and described to her that it is a "ghostly little oval cloud with a faint wisp of light, its tail extending to the left and slightly upward" as I pointed to show her where beneath the Pleiades and just left of the Hyades "V" star cluster in Taurus. She saw it for the first time, then wanted to invite me to bring the telescope to her acreage up the road. I thanked her but...I was already set up and tracking on many time exposure photographs, as another elderly gentleman explained to her that he witnessed "Mark already spending an hour just to get his equipment set up; I don't think he wants to leave here just yet." So she sped off.
art & photography by markseibold©1954~2015
all rights reserved
Photographer's website:
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/1579463287
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