Comet C/2023 P1

[elsie]

Did anyone attempt to see or try to photograph Comet C/2023 P1, which has had several mentions in the press and elsewhere in the last few weeks. It was predicted it might be bright enough to be visible to the naked eye just before sunrise during recent days (but that wasn't the case here in the Vosges)?

There was light pollution here, eastwards towards Alsace, to add to the arriving dawn. The comet was not visible to the eye (and I could not locate it with 8x binoculars). There was also little time to experiment and check results. So I ended up just pointing the camera in the general direction and took sequences of images with different exposures to stack together later to get an overall longer exposure minimising star movement due to earth rotation.

This was typical of all I managed to capture (taken at 05:44 on 9 Sept) using a 100mm lens (35mm equivalent) - a significant crop from one of the stacked images. The slightly greenish comet head is at the bottom centre with signs of a tail vertically above.

Comet C2023 P1 20230909.jpg

Rather disappointing, but images posted by others with similar equipment I've seen have been much the same.

Now, if only I had a 5000€ telescope, 5000€ camera, and a 12,000€ motorised tracking mount and was somewhere with no light pollution, I might, with lot of practice. have got something more like this https://www.astrobin.com/full/9phxmi/B/

[Lori]

Husband just bought a telescope as the skies here are so amazing by night. It only just arrived, so he is still getting used to it.

Our budget did not allow for the 5000€ and up fancier ones. So, we'll see what happens.

We were in Limoges yesterday, so he did not even know about the comet.

That photo in the link is truly amazing.