On Sunday morning, May 7th, I set the alarm clock for 3:00am to shoot this beauty. I didn't have much time because morning light as signaled by the whip-poor-wills was fast approaching. Unfortunately, it took me a good 30 minutes to find this, I can state first hand that it was NOT naked eye visible on that evening. I ended up using the celestial coordinates of the object and by hand rotating my telescope to where it should be. I took 4 3 minute exposures, but because the comet was crossing the meridien at the time, I had all kinds of tracking problems (German Equitorial Mounts have a tiny bit of slop in their gear drives making it near impossible to photograph through the meridien).
The following evening this comet fragment (frag C) transitted the ring nebula, unfortunately, here in southern NH the high thin cirrus clouds made photographing this event impossible.
Wow, fabulous shot!
Posted by: Perry | May 08, 2006 at 03:42 PM