Comet Hunting

Tried to peek through the clouds to get a glimpse at Comet Lemmon. It hasn’t been easy with clouds rolling in just as it’s been getting dark, however thought I’d give it a try regardless. You’ll never catch fish if you don’t put your line in the water.

As the clouds parted I was able to easily see the comets nucleus. In the photo you can even see it reflected in the river. The tail was harder to see. The camera picked it up nicely even amongst the light pollution of the Village of Radium Hot Springs.

Just a word about light pollution; it was interesting to have been in Waterton recently and saw how they have tried to limit light pollution. They are part of a dark sky reserve and it is important to them. In the Windermere Valley light pollution gets brought up occasionally but never gets much traction. The only way it ever will is by showing decision makers that there is some profit in shining lights down. That is a tough sell in a valley growing as fast as this one.

Speaking of pollution, notice the ‘scratches’ in the sky around Comet Lemmon. These are Starlink satellites. It is amazing and annoying how many are in low orbit around the earth. It is almost impossible to look into a darkened sky without seeing them now. This is only going to get worse as Starlink continues to launch thousands more and other countries and companies begin to launch their own version of Starlink.

Without regulations or common sense it may become impossible, in the future, to enjoy the stars, meteor showers and visiting comets, as the night sky fills with streaking satellites. Humans should be ashamed of polluting the atmosphere, oceans, water and land, instead of giving it a second thought, however, we have moved onto corrupting the space and stars above us.

I would still like to get a better look at Comet Lemmon, but my chances are limited as it gets closer to the sun and our weather fails to improve.

10 thoughts on “Comet Hunting”

  2. mountaincoward's avatar

    mountaincoward

    Superb – especially it reflecting in the river. I still haven’t seen it and our weather is pretty bad now.

    The first time I saw some of that Starlink stuff, I thought it was an alien invasion… there was this, obviously non-natural, dead straight line of what looked like stars all down the piece of sky in front of me. I’d not heard about Starlink at that time.

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    1. underswansea's avatar

      underswansea

      That’s exactly how I felt when I first saw Starlinks. I had a friend who was out camping in the mountains and saw them for the first time during the start of Covid and thought it was some kind of war games. He thought the world had gone to hell.
      They piss me off.

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    1. underswansea's avatar

      underswansea

      I am really pushing things in this photo. The lens is one that I don’t usually use for astrophotography, to try to get as close up of the comet. Because of this the stars streak a little at a 25second exposure. There is something called the rule of 500 (500 divided by camera lens size equals maximum exposure in seconds of shutter speed before stars trail). I am breaking this rule to try to capture as much light from the comet. I do this because I am only taking a singe exposure. If you notice the best pictures of comets are taken by taking multiple exposures and stacking them in photoshop to create one image, or are taken with really long exposures having the camera on a sky tracker. Both of these methods require more equipment and software that I have, so it’s a single exposure for me.

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      1. Flying Squirrel's avatar

        Flying Squirrel

        It looks nice, thanks for sharing your technique here.

        I experimented with an astrophotography-focused stacking software a few years back, but I never could get the hang of getting the dark frames to properly eliminate sensor noise. Plus I found that everything shifted toward a green color. I WAS able to get better resolution, but ultimately got frustrated with the other issues. I’d love to get a nicer scope, star tracker, etc as well, but those aren’t among the highest of life’s priorities!

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