I got out an snagged some sweet views of Comet 17P/Holmes again this evening. I viewed through both the Astro Physics Starfire 160 (6.2″) and the ObDob, a 25″ Obsession Dobsonian Reflector. Views were sweet in both, but I have to say… at least as far as telescopes go… size does matter

The comet just about filled the 31mm Nagler eyepiece. This is my lowest power, widest field of view eyepiece. At 100x and roughly 0.8*, the comet seemed to be bigger than the estimates I’ve heard. The prominent core seems to have faded… or been hidden behind all the cometary debris encircling this comet.

This comet had already blown me away with the unexpectedly great show it’s put on. I’d not expected have a comet to look forward to for quite some time. Even when I first heard about it, I figured it’d not likely be all that great. Wrong! This comet has put on an amazing show… and it’s not not done yet. I has moved a few degrees though the constellation Perseus in less than 2 weeks.

Here’s an image I processed on Saturday night from images captured on Tuesday night (11/07). That particular night, I was hoping to image the recently detected tail of the comet. I saw that a few astrophotographers had taken much longer exposures than I had. While I was trying to portray the comet as it appeared in the eyepiece, these individuals were looking for details well beyond what could be seen visually. So, I opted for 30 minutes of exposure time via (18) x 75 second expousres. I went all the way to ISO 1600 to make sure I grabbed every possible photon. When I stacked the images, I was depressed to see that I had absolutely no tail to show for my efforts. Subsequents images seen online as well as comments seemed to indicate that the comet’s tail had disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. Comet 17P/Holmes had once again proved to be no ordinary comet.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Comet 17P/Holmes
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: 2.5
* Size: 15′ (roughly 1/2 the diameter of the full moon!)

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 18 x 75s exposures at ISO1600
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels
* Gimp Levels