Comet Machholz on Jan 12 with

the Meade 622 Cometracker

Uploaded 1/16/05

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 The dust tail has swung around to the side now that orbital plane crossing during the last full moon has come and gone. This dust is greenish yellow, and points toward the 1:00 position in this image. The blue gas tail is thin, tenuous and points toward 3:30 here. The comet rapidly lost its tail, but not its brilliance beaming at 3.5 magnitude during this photo taken nearly straight up.

The Meade 622 was made during the 1986 Halley visit by mead, and is a 6" f/3.6 Schmidt Newtonian. I'm getting nearly 2 degrees of field here, and only a small amount of coma lies on the edges of the field. The 10D combined with the 622 makes for a potent comet photographic machine!

Instrument: 6" f/3.6 Schmidt Newtonian Platform: Televue GEM Camera: Canon 10D Exposure: 6 x 2m Filters: None Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 7/10, Transparency 8/10 Outside Temperature: 30F Processing Tools: Photoshop CS, PixInsight HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS FastCounter by bCentral