I got out under some pretty sweet skies and checked out Comet 17P/Holmes again. It is an amazing object. It has grown immense over the last few days. Reports indicate that it is now roughly 1/2 the visual diameter of the moon! This is colossal. I could even see that the comet no longer looks star-like to the naked eye. It has grown fat Pointing the scope at it, revealed a bunch of new details. First up were the background stars visible through the haze of the comet. These gave a nice sense of place to the comet. It is out there, cruising through our solar system. I didn’t get to pull the big scope out as I was hoping to snag some images quickly.

This shot was one of those images, a 30 second exposure at ISO 800 with the Canon Rebel XTi shooting through a 2x barlow connected to my F/7.5 Astro Physics Starfire 160 refractor. This puts me at about f/10 if I did my match correctly. Click on the image to view it full sized. At this size, you’ll note that the haze surrounding the comet has got some serious size to it.

Need more? Checkout Comet 17/P Holmes at higher power and Comet 17/P Holmes II with some background stars. More recently, see how the comet has grown in Comet 17P/Holmes II.I.