Comet C/2023 P1 Nishimura
Taken by Jason Evans on September 9, 2023 @
Hampshire, United Kingdom
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Details:
We have had an unusually hot and sunny start to September in the UK but in the early hours when comet Nishimura is rising it has been a bit murky on the horizon so it has not been possible to see it, I had almost given up hope, there is only so many times I can get up at 03:30 to see nothing.
The forecast looked good for the morning of the 9th so I met up with a friend to try and observe it, we both live in a town with Bortle 5 sky (according the Bortle map) I think it more like Bortle 6. Combined with the comets low altitude in a brightening twilight sky, the odds of seeing it were stacked against us, but we had to try.
So with cameras set up on top of a railway bridge, which is one of the closest higher points giving us a better view of the eastern horizon, we aimed them in the approximate direction and started taking exposures. At 03:34 BST (UT+1) there was nothing visible in my images, other than a few stars, 5 minutes later a faint object became visible, we checked the position of the comet and compared it with the stars in our images and it all lined up, success! as it climbed higher it was easier to see (in photos) the green colour was noticeable and I think the brightest part of the tail can be seen, I thought it might be my eyes deceiving me but I see it in every image and it is in the right place comparing to other photos. We managed to get a few more photos as it climbed out of the murk but the sky was beginning to brighten and we decided we had enough images. We did observe it visually, I used my 10X50 binoculars but it was not easy, in fact, I could only really detect it using averted vision and moving my binoculars around, it popped in and out of view, as soon as I tried to look at it directly, it seemed to vanish. My photos are just single, unstacked images with a 105mm lens on Canon 70D exposure time 2 seconds ISO 1250 with minimal proceeding, (just some adjustments to contrast and light levels)
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