I've already captured two nights-worth of Comet McNaught, but this just looked too good to miss. The planetarium program indicated that the new moon - just one day old (which is why you can't see it in the screen-capture at left) and Venus and the comet should all be in the same field of view! You beauty!

So... how did I go at capturing this three-in-one photo? Keep looking... Sure enough, here is the youngest moon I've yet managed to capture. (Not counting a partial and a total eclipse, of course. hehe.) 1.33 days old compared to 1.94 days old on the Earthshine page. No Earthshine in this image, sadly. The moon set before the sky was dark enough to show it. Now let's zoom back a bit and look for Venus:

Whoops! Can you see my problem? (Have another look at the planetarium screen-shot at the top of the page.) Sigghh. The comet is wa-a-a-a-a-y too far south to fit in the same frame. Besides - there were too many trees to allow the shot I wanted.. Let's continue:

Here's the comet as he looked on Saturday.       MAGNIFICENT long sweeping tail. I estimate (from the position of the faint stars) that the tail is at least 12° long in this photo. Other observers, at darker sites, estimated 30°. This is the most impressive comet seen in Australia for decades!

Here is the obligatory animation:

The animation at left consists of 16 frames taken five seconds apart - 1min 20sec of real time. I have sped it up to 10x real speed. Still - it should give an idea of just how quickly the comet sunk into the horizon. Larger version - 1.4Mb 500 pixels wide. Huge version - 3.1Mb 1000 pixels wide. (Both slowed down to 20x real-time.)

Back to Comet McNaught day 1.
Back to Comet McNaught day 2.
Return to Science page 1.

---

Break out of this frame.