Comet PANSTARRS in Color
This image is a combination of Red/Green/Blue exposures from March 15th. Camera was the SBIG 8300m and telescope was the Takahashi FSQ-85 with reducer, tracking on the AP900 GTO mount. The comet had moved far enough north to have a clear shot from my regular setup location at the Starry Nights B&B. Alignment was on the comet's head; image includes one red and two each green & blue frames and they were captured right before the comet set.
Comet PANSTARRS is quite bright as comets go, but it is hard to view and image because it is so close to the horizon in the northern hemisphere as it makes its closest pass by the sun in March 2013.
A thin crescent moon about 4 degrees away greatly simplified the task of finding comet PANSTARRS on March 12, 2013. I found it about 15 minutes prior to the previous night where there was no such guidepost. I was running 3 cameras this night. The image above is a crop from the Nikon D200 camera, Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens at f1.8, fixed tripod, 1.6 seconds, ISO 400, March 12, 2013, from The Woodlands, TX.
Tripod mounted Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope at 450 mm and f5.3 (no reducer), Nikon D7000 camera at ISO 400, 2.5 second exposure March 12, 2013. The Woodlands, TX. That's a magnitude 6 star below & mag 7 star below/right.
March 11, 2013 using the Nikon D7000 camera, 1.3 sec at ISO 1000, Nikon 300mm f4 ED lens at f4.5, tripod mounted.
Canon 20Da Camera, Canon 85mm f1.8 lens at f2.8, 1 sec at ISO 400. Camera mounted on Vixen Polarie at "star" tracking rate. March 11, 2013.
March 13 the moon was quite a bit higher than PANSTARRS. This is a fixed-tripod image with the Nikon D7000 and 50mm f1.8 lens at f1.8. 1.6 sec at ISO 400.
Copyright © 2013 by Dick Locke. All Rights Reserved.
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