Still pretty photogenic

 C/2023 A3 is still up and on the edge of naked eye visible. With the moon coming up a little later it is still pretty photogenic.

c2023 a3 is still here

 

Tail and Anti-Tail!

The fog in SF lifted right at sunset and C/2023 A3 was easily naked eye visible. Best comet I have seen to date! You can see an Anit-tail and Venus reflected in a tide pool. 

The sun set wasn't half bad either. If you look close you can see some sunspots mixed in with some birds.

The tail was so long it barely fit in the 70mm view (well more like 100mm on my crop sensor). I kept thinking the anti-tail was an artifact like a lens flare or reflection but then found out what an anti-tail is and that it's just how it looks from the earth's current perspective.

It's a little hard to tell but you can see it reflecting in the water just a little.

It started looking a little red as it was setting and getting into the thick atmosphere and low haze.

 

Farallon Surprise!

 Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS over the Farallon Islands.

We had just clear enough skies in SF that I was able to see the comet just after sunset. It was just on the edge of naked eye visible. Fingers crossed for clear skies tonight (Oct 12th) when it should be at it's brightest.

Best comet in years!

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) rising over SF.

Best comet in years. Fingers crossed it comes back around the sun and becomes (easily) naked eye visible starting around Oct 10th or 11th.

Comet Over SF

Comet Neowise (aka C/2020 F3) over San Francisco.

Lovejoy take 2 plus a few Geminids

Gave it another shot this morning. Maybe a little better than the one from yesterday but not much. I did see some shooting stars while up on the roof taking images of Lovejoy but didn't get any good pictures.

Caught a comet for Owen's birthday!

Last year I caught a meteor for my new nephew Owen when he was born. This year I caught a comet. Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy to be exact. Got up at 4:30am and spent an hour or so taking the picture of Lovejoy over SF and another 2 or 3 hours processing it. Maybe my best comet picture yet? Happy birthday Owen!

It's Pan-STARRS!

It's comet Pan-STARRS and it looks a little like an "!"!
Me and a friend just managed to get a look at Pan-STARRS tonight at work. It was cool but we did need binoculars or my camera+200mm lens to see it. I'm pretty happy with the pictures I managed to get. Keep looking west at sunset for the next week or so and maybe you can catch a glimpse of it.

Exploding Star, Comet, Whirlpools and Jupiter's Pimple!

Went out to look at and take pictures of the new super nova 2011fe. Had lots of fun and met a few other guys, Warren, Corey and Dave, out doing the same. My images didn't turn out as well as I hoped but I got something. Lucky for me Warren had some pointers and I if all goes well my next outing should get me some better images. And Dave gave the rest of us coordinates for Comet Garradd so I managed to get some pictures of it too. Again not so great but better than my first attempt at a comet picture!

M101 aka the Pinwheel Galaxy and Super Nova 2011fe.


In case you couldn't spot it here is where SN/2011fe is. By the end of the week it is supposed to be bright enough to see through binocular!


And here is Comet Garradd.


M51 aka the Whirlpool Galaxy. Cool even if it is a pretty bad image with butterfly stars because of tracking issues. At least you can make it out right?


Check it out, Jupiter has a pimple! Actually That's Jupiter's moon Io just starting to peak out from behind it. Dumb luck. Not sure if it's cool or not to have Io stuck on Jupiter's side like that. Mostly I think it's kind of cool. Oh, and this is probably the best image of the night even though I wasn't set up for taking images of planets. I would have taken more shots but my camera battery died right after this. Stayed for a bit longer just looking through eye pieces and chatting with the other guy. All in all a fun night!

Boring Space Stuff

There is a comet out right now, C/2009 R1 a.k.a Comet McNaught, which I decided to try and find. Then I thought I would try and take a picture. It didn't work out so well.

I could see it okay with my telescope but my picture came out pretty bad. I had some major technical difficulties with my astrophotography rig as in I didn't test it at all before heading out. I was mostly just wanting to take my new telescope with tracking head out for a proper test run. It worked really well unlike my photo rig. I saw lots of fun stuff, Comet McNaught, Saturn, Jupiter and a galaxy or two.

I had better luck taking a picture of Jupiter.

It was a lot brighter and played better with my half working photo rig.

These two are the same but with different stack processing (stacking is taking lots of pictures of the same thing then using some fancy computer magic to get a better image).

Not sure which I like better.

Oh, and here is the first test I did a few months back trying to get a picture of Saturn.

You can sort of see it. Once I get my setup working correctly I should be able to get much better images but it's pretty exciting to get anything right now.