Comet Machholz - C/2004 Q2

[Click to enlarge]
18:51:04 UTC 12th January 2005
Canon EOS 300D with 200mm lens at F2.8
60 sec exposure at ISO 1600

Comet Machholz was discovered by Donald Machholz on August 27, 2004. It has an orbital period of 113,465 years, which is why it was only recently discovered.

This comet was my first attempt at performing observations. The first comet I saw was Comet Halley in 1986 through a cheap pair of binoculars. I then photographed Hale-Bopp in 1997 with a film SLR camera on a fixed tripod.

The image is over-exposed as can be seen with the white-out visible where the nucleus of the comet is to be expected. You can all see some egging of the stars where they have drifted in the image. The photo was taken with a Canon EOS 300D digital camera riding on top of my telescope so that the motor drive could counteract the rotation of the earth. Obviously the scope was not aligned correctly hence the egging of the stars.

The photograph was annotated, showing the direction of the north celestial pole, the coordinates of the comet as determined with a star map and the time the image was taken. You can just make out the galaxy NGC 1333.