Here is where I plan to set up for best view of comet over the redwoods.
Comet A3 T-Atlas is fading fast, but our first opportunity to get long exposures in dark skies w/o moon, is Sunday evening. The sun is at altitude -17 and it's officially dark at 7:44pm, and probably we can be shooting before that. Astronomical twilight is defined as altitude = -18, but by the time the sun is at -12 it's usually dark enough for long exposures if the magnification is high.
Moonrise 82%- is at 7:56pm, so we have a full hour or more of dark time.
We get to see the comet at a wide low between nearer redwood trees if we set up along the narrow bike path that leads south from the western side of Empire Grade. Officially it says the bike crossing is a fire lane and no parking, but I've never been hassled for parking here, and I've done it often for many years. The direction to the comet is very dark; west. We should be able to take long photos.
I'd like to have our new ZWO camera with new laptop taking a long series of images we can play with. And I'd also like to see Will and Bernard working their magic with these new instruments and software, which I need to learn too.
Cabrillo has TWO GM8 mounts and now two Williams Optics refractors, so I can be doing exposures on the other GM8, both just as a guided platform for long exposures with telephoto lens and foreground redwoods, and also with the GM8 on it.
The Google Earth image of our site is below. The yellow line is the Azimuth 252 to the comet at 7:44pm. The right end of the line is along a narrow bike path I've used in the past for setting up for asteroid events or photography, and be directed away from headlights. Click on the thumbnail images below for full size views...
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Here is where I plan to set up for best view of comet over the redwoods. |
We will have only a brief interval of dark sky. Not enough to justify all the complex set up with computers and learning curves etc etc that I'd thought. So instead, I'm just going to bring the GM8 and polar align and put on my Nikon D7000 and take a series of 30s images with the zoom lens and hope to stack them. On Saturday night, the moon rises at 7:56pm with the sun at -15.5 degrees. Not ideal, and just a narrow window from maybe 7:35 (sun=-14.8 to 7:56 moonrise, 20 minutes max to try and get images done.
Pictures Afterwards...
Guess everyone was busy... but I did get some nice shots during the brief period after the end of twilight and moonrise. I'll add to this as I get some moments...
