Comet Holmes Above Salt Lake City | Michael Carl Eaton

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Photographer:

Michael Carl Eaton

Location of Photo:

West Valley City, UT

Date/Time of photo:

November 2, 2007, 9:00pm-11:00pm

Equipment:

Orion 80mm dia. 480mm fl refractor on equatorial mount with motor drive. Canon XTi digital camera at prime focus.

Description:

From my backyard in West Valley City, UT. (a more-or-less suburb of Salt Lake City, Comet Holmes rises directly above downtown Salt Lake City -- and all of its light pollution. The sky was distinctly reddish. I tried to compensate for that by doing a manual white balance. This is a cropped composite of about 43 exposures, ranging in ISO from 100 to 1600 and shutter speeds of 25 seconds to 3 minutes. Registax did compositing, and then PaintShop Pro 12 was used to bring out the inner detail of the nucleus. We also have 20X80 binoculars, and they were marvelous for visual observation. How strange to see such a bright comet with virtually no tail.