James Slezak <slezak.james@gmail.com>
Attachments
Sat, Feb 11, 7:58 PM (13 hours ago)

to Jackie

In the middle of this image is the reddish object, Mars. Just below it is the comet. The dust tail is visible and slight brightening of the nucleus is just visible. In the upper right corner is the open cluster M45, more commonly known as the Pleides. It is also called Subaru or the Seven Sisters. Faint nebulosity around individual stars can just be seen. At the bottom right hand corner is the streak of a sporadic meteor. To the left of the streak is a bright reddish star, Aldeberan, the brightest star in Hyades. If you draw a line from Aldebaran to Mars you will see a grouping of stars. This is an open cluster, NGC1647. If you continue along a line from Aldebaran to NGC 1647 you see another grouping os stars. This is a larger grouping than NGC 1647 and is called NGC 1746. The bright blue star in the left hand corner sits below and to the left of a little bright patch, the Crab Nebula or M!.

The comet is small because this is an uncropped image and the image scale is pretty much what you would see with only your eyes. The comet is not visible to me without binoculars. If I zoomed in, you would see slight star streaking.

Wispy clouds were moving about.

This is probably as good an image of the comet as I am going to get!

f 1.8 55 mm lens on Sony A7R, 8 second exposure at f 1.8, ISO 3200, on tripod, remote shutter release

just levels in PhotoShop