Moon, Comet and Venus Continue Their Dance

Comet C/2014 US10 Catalina (blue-green fuzzy dot to the left), the moon and Venus to the right

I predicted last week that the viewing would get better all week for Comet Catalina, with an interesting configuration in the sky with the moon and Venus joining the comet this morning (above).  The three celestial bodies played hide and seek for hours after they rose, then the hazy cloud cover seemed to close, so I caught a few final exposures before picking up my tripod and heading inside.  Fortunately the very last few frames did let all three shine through the clouds just enough that I could show them to you here.

The 14% crescent moon was a lot brighter than the comet, but it'll only be an 8% sliver tomorrow morning, and its rise will follow Venus and the comet, so comet photography will be good before the moon rises, then you can try for all three again as the moon rises.

The image above was captured on a Canon 5D Mark III and EF 85mm f.1.8 lens and cropped from the larger field of view.  The 85mm lens should just fit the three objects again tomorrow, or I might go to 70mm for a wide shot like this.  For shots of the comet only, I'll probably use my Canon EOS 70D on a sky tracking mount, perhaps with a Canon EF 70-300mm f.4-5.6 IS lens to get an effective focal length of up to 480mm.

The screen shot to the right shows what the configuration will look like tomorrow.

Viewing Comet Catalina Gets Better All Week!

Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina at 6;10 am December 1, captured on a Canon 5DMarkIII with 85mm lens

Catalina December 1 at an effective focal length of 480 mm.

In late November I retweeted a link to an +EarthSky article describing a comet that would be brightening in the coming weeks, Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina.  This morning Comet Catalina was visible below Venus in the early morning sky to the East, as shown in the image above from 6:11 am this morning.

I also captured it at 300 mm on a Canon EOS 70D (right).  Due to bright moonlight, its tails were not easy to pick up, even at an effective focal length of 480 mm.  Over the coming week, the sky will get darker as the moon approaches its new moon phase, so the Comet and its tails should get progressively easier to see.  In the meantime, using a tracking mount would enable brighter exposures with less noise, so better results than this quick catch on a fixed tripod are certainly possible, but the best results should come as the moon gets out of the way November 8 and later, weather permitting.

Catalina with Venus & moon 12/7

Early on the morning of  December 7, there will be an interesting configuration in the sky as it rises to the left of Venus and the moon as a 14.7% crescent.  The moon rises at around 3:20 am with a zero degree elevation horizon such as the ocean followed by Venus and then Catalina around 3:40, so look for the trio clearing a moderately low land horizon around 3:45 am.  These times vary slightly with your latitude, but you can look up exact times in programs such as +The Photographer's Ephemeris or +PhotoPills.  On the morning of November 8, the situation will be similar but with the moon at 8.3%, following the earlier rise of Comet Catalina and Venus.

My 85 mm shot at the top is a four second exposure at f/2.8, ISO 3200 on a standard tripod with no sky-tracking mount, so many DSLR owners can start capturing it, whenever the sky is clear for them in the next week or two.

You can look up the comet in an app such as SkySafari+ to see exactly when it will rise in your location each morning.

Good luck with your viewing and photography!  Weather permitting, I hope to have some results to show you at some point in the December 7-14 timeframe!  Here are some of my prior comet photos on Flickr to entertain you in the meantime: https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=23183960%40N00&sort=date-taken-desc&text=comets&view_all=1

If you have a dark sky, watch for Comet Catalina before dawn! https://t.co/ELSmctWqCP pic.twitter.com/W5DzanagA0

— EarthSky (@earthskyscience) November 23, 2015

Four Nights With Comet Lovejoy

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy on the evening of Monday, January 19, 2015.

Last night I enjoyed the best viewing conditions for capturing Comet Lovejoy so far.  Seen under the dark skies of California's Eastern Sierra region and with no moon in the sky, even its long tail showed up well.  Knowing where to look (near Pleiades) I was able to just see it with my eyes, and find it with a 70-200 mm lens.  Using a Canon 70D DLSR, its "crop sensor" gave me the equivalent of 320 mm focal length.  I even added a 2X teleconverter to bring the effective focal length to a massive 640 mm!

I used an external interval timer to capture one-minute exposures until the camera's battery power ran out nearly 2.5 hours later.  I had the camera placed on an inexpensive star-tracking mount to follow the comet as the earth rotated.  I converted the resulting 147 exposures to video, and with 640 mm zoom, over the course of 2 hours you can see the comet move against the starry background!

Here are the time-lapse video results of several nights shooting, at effective focal lengths of 28 mm, 35 mm, 320 mm and 640 mm.  The video is best viewed full screen, switched to HD 1080p quality:


I hope that I get more clear nights this month to shoot the comet, as it gradually moves away from the earth and the sun on its big lap of our solar system.

Photograph Comet Lovejoy in January

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy on January 6, 2015.

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy passes closest to earth tonight, offering our brightest viewing of it for several thousand more years.  It will brighten as it continues to approach the sun, but appear to fade in brightness as it recedes from earth, and as those two trends work against each other we'll have continued good viewing conditions for the next couple of weeks. 

The recent full moon challenged viewing, but tonight, January 7, in the Northern Hemisphere the moon rises about 3 hours after sunset.  Once the sky is fully dark (approximately 6:30 pm in mid northern latitudes), you'll have roughly an hour of dark sky viewing before the approaching moon brightens your sky.  Tomorrow, January 8, your dark sky window extends roughly 6:30 - 8:30.

You don't need fancy equipment to see this comet.  It's bright enough to see with binoculars, or in test exposures taken with a 24mm or 50mm lens or to find in a 70-200 mm zoom at the widest 70 mm focal length.  For the next few nights Comet Lovejoy will be to the right of the constellation Orion.  +Universe Today provides a handy finder chart in their article "Finding Lovejoy: How to Follow the Path of Comet 2014 Q2 Through January".

I captured the test image above with the nearly-full moon in the sky, using a Canon 70D DSLR and EF 70-300 mm f/4-5.6 lens on a star-tracking mount.  If you don't have a star tracking mount, no problem, just use your widest lens (I'd use an EF 16-35 mm f/2.8 lens wide open at f/2.8 and at it's widest focal length of 16mm).  Crank up the ISO and take a number of long test exposures to determine which combination of ISO and exposure time work well on your camera.

If the skies remain clear I should be able to capture even better images during moonless hours in the coming nights.

How to Photograph Comet Siding Spring by Mars, October 18-19

Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy and a Geminid Meteor, December 2013

Comet Siding Spring will pass Mars tomorrow, Sunday October 19, 2014.  The Orionid meteor shower is also underway, so you might get lucky and catch a meteor as well, like I did with this Geminid meteor I caught with Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy last December.

I see that my exposure was 8 seconds at ISO 5000 on a 50mm lens. It was an f/1.4 lens, so I was able to shoot at f/1.6. No star tracking mount was needed for up to a 10 second exposure with that lens.  With that long of an exposure, shouldn't the stars appear to be moving across the sky?  Using the "500 Rule", as long as the focal length times the exposure in seconds doesn't exceed 500, you should be fine.  So 50 x 8 = 400, and you get no visible star movement.

If you try a 400 mm lens however your maximum exposure goes to 1.25 seconds, so you'd need a star tracking mount.  Most people don't have star tracking mounts, so a good compromise might be an 85 mm lens offering f/1.8 or wider, keep the exposure around 5-6 seconds or less, and boost the ISO a bit is necessary.  The comet is approaching Mars now, so try it tonight, Saturday, for practice.

Seen from mid northern latitudes this weekend, Mars will be visible to the southwest from the end of evening twilight until it sets around 9/9:30 pm or so.  Good luck!

I performed lens tests with Comet C/2-013 R1 Lovejoy in 2013. I've put together a time-lapse video today to show you how they did. I've uploaded the video to YouTube here:


http://youtu.be/B-PCqS1KAT8

+NASA Goddard has produced a cool visualization showing how Comet Siding Spring will pass Mars, in this video: