Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas 10/19/24
A bit late to the party … I’ve been wanting to get a shot of this comet for a while, and I’ve been drooling over some of the photos our talented local photographers have taken. But schedule and other things have been preventing me from joining in. I finally decided to try and at least get something. Of course, now the comet is much more dim, making shots more difficult, especially scenic shots with the comet. I figured that’s mostly OK because I didn’t really have the time to go to a location where I could get a nice scenic shot. With the time I had, about all I could do was go up to my roof and snap a few shots. With the possibility of scenic shots out, I figured the next best thing would be to throw a long lens on and try to get a closeup. With as dim as it is, it would need a longer exposure, and with a long lens that really means using a tracking mount. Even though the garage is still in quite a bit of disarray due to the flood and rebuilding, I had tried to keep my astrophotography stuff mostly accessible, so I went to get that. But frustratingly, a critical piece was missing (the counter-weight shaft). There’s no way to use a heavy lens without a counterweight, and there was little hope of me finding it. So, about the only thing I could do was take a series of short(ish) shots and stack them. It’s not as good as a longer exposure (actually, the best would be stacking longer exposures, which was my plan), but it’s better than missing a pretty rare opportunity. Anyway, after that long preamble, here’s the shot I got from my roof last night.
