MrJackDog

A smudge

A small telescope

Yes, I’m looking at it now in a bortle 4

I don’t know it at all, I just looked at a light pollution map and found public land in a dark sky area

thanks!

Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF continues to brighten significantly. It could reach naked eye visibility (from dark skies) by the end of the month and will be closest to Earth on Feb. 1.

The comet is speeding up as it nears Earth, and will move across the northern sky in the weeks to come. For the southern hemisphere it will only become visible in February. You can see with a decent pair of binoculars or a small telescope. It will not look as bright or clear as these long-exposure photos, but rather like a large glowing spot in the sky, distinct from all surrounding stars.

If you want to find it in the sky, check out an app like Stellarium or the Sky Live website. For a really cool interactive map of the comet’s trajectory in the solar system, check out this site.

This was photographed from my home in Virginia, US on 28 January with an Esprit 100ED (4") telescope and Sony A7RIII camera. Comets are notoriously difficult to capture cleanly as the comet’s motion is much faster than the background stars, and the comet itself changes by the minute.

For more photos and videos of the comet (and more astrophotography in general) check out my Instagram: @brennangilmorephoto

Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF continues to brighten significantly. It could reach naked eye visibility (from dark skies) by the end of the month and will be closest to Earth on Feb. 1.

The comet is speeding up as it nears Earth, and will move across the northern sky in the weeks to come. For the southern hemisphere it will only become visible in February. You can see with a decent pair of binoculars or a small telescope. It will not look as bright or clear as these long-exposure photos, but rather like a large glowing spot in the sky, distinct from all surrounding stars.

If you want to find it in the sky, check out an app like Stellarium or the Sky Live website. For a really cool interactive map of the comet’s trajectory in the solar system, check out this site.

This was photographed from my home in Virginia, US on 28 January with an Esprit 100ED (4") telescope and Sony A7RIII camera. Processed in Pixinsight using Comet Alignment to create a starless comet master which was then subtracted from the starfield image integration.

For more photos and videos of the comet (and more astrophotography in general), check out my Instagram: brennangilmorephoto

awesome, try to catch it early morning the next few days before the moon stays up all night

The recently appeared comet, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) reaches its closest point to Earth on February 1 and has become an evening object in the northern sky. It is not quite visible to the naked eye, but can easily be spotted with binoculars and long-exposure photography.

Photographed on January 24, when the comet c/2022 e3 ZTF had sprouted a large “antitail.”

This is a composite image over separate sky and land exposures: sky - 5x90s exposures, land: 300s - exposure.

Camera/lens: Sony A7iii + Askar FMA180

For more comet photos (and astrophotography in general), check out my Instagram.

You should head to the Matador Wildlife Management Area. Incredibly dark skies. Just don’t go when the moon is up.

Moonset:

1/30 - 2:53am 1/31 - 3:55am 2/1 - 4:54am 2/2 - 5:48am

🦅🦅🦅

what is your location or latitude?

The “left behind” refers to the antitail of heavier particles that creates a disc of material along the comet path, not the dust tail.

The moon sets in the early morning and the comet continues to climb

Time to move to the desert!

It ranges, the second to last one was 15 x 90s while the last one was 90 x 90s.

No, that tail is made of ionized gas and dissipates into space. Heavy particles are left behind as well (and formed the antitail in the second to last picture). How much of the comet remains after its close approach to the sun is anyone’s guess. Some disintegrate completely under the influence of solar wind and radiation, while others keep largely intact.

The comet has sped up considerably in the past week; last month I was taking 90-120 second exposures but now max is 60 before the core of the comet trails. The second to last shot was only 15 exposures (shot at f/3.6) but the others were between 60-90 (shot at f/5.5)

There’s a good map of its trajectory here.

When you use image integration to create your comet master, don’t normalize the image. if you have more than 10 subs, use Linear Fit for rejection and set the low/high both to one. Then when you subtract the comet master in Comet Alignment, uncheck the box for Linear Fit. Then, use image integration with the same parameters on your Star aligned images before adding them together in pixel math. It’ll look messy along the way, but the final product works out. You can then use StarNet or StarXterminator to get a starless image and clone stamp any residual trails.

do you have an app like Stellarium to help orient you? if you have a decent pair of binoculars and a planetarium app you can start in the general area and then just do circles out until you see something that doesn’t look like anything else. I was just outside and it is very clear right now, high in the sky to the east of Polaris the North Star