Comet Lulin

Uploaded 2/21/09

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 This is one frame in a sequence of 83 continuous shots taken by the robotic barn door mount yesterday morning with the Sigma 8mm fish eye lens looking generally southeast. I was testing a new polar bore scope that night, which worked great as the stars are very round and the unit is tracking well. This frame around 1am shows a bright green dot on the meridian, very near the center of the frame - the 5.5 mag comet Lulin. The inset shows a 10x enlargement which not only shows the nice tight stars images, but that Lulin has a much more developed tail. The next few days the comet will be closest to Earth and the view will be even better!
Instrument: Sigma 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @f/4 Platform: Robotic Barn Door Mount Camera: Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO800 Exposure: 5m Filters: None Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 4/10, Transparency 7/10 Outside Temperature: 35F Processing Tools: Photoshop CS2, Maxim DSLR HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS