What's this then?

[osbourne one-nil]

I braved the cold last night and went out with my Astrotrac and took a shot of the Pleiades and Jupiter with a 70mm Canon lens. Nothing special, but there's a fuzzy patch just below the Pleiades, which I don't recognise.

It's probably just a lens something or other, but thought I'd ask in case I'm being thick.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

As it seems to be exactly opposite the centre of the image from Jupiter, I would guess it is a reflections of Jupiter against a flat optical surface in the optical path (filter, most likely)

[fwm891]

Hi Michael,

Overlaying a star chart on your image doesn't seem to show an 'object' there....

I've also lightened your image which gives your object a 'comet like' nucleus!

[Paulus17]

I was out last night taking some images with just my camera on a tripod of Jupiter,Pleiades,Orion,but haven't looked at em yet.

What time was this image taken?

Saw a great meteor/fireball though around 8-15 low in the sky heading from east to north.

[Steve Ward]

Looks like the same thing someone was asking about the other day . . .

Internal reflections would be my first instinctive answer.

Steve.

[osbourne one-nil]

Thanks all, this would have been around 11.30pm.

Comet Palmer - that has a nice ring to it.

[Paulus17]

All my images were taken between 5-30pm and 9pm and i have had a quick look through em and can't see anything like what is shown in your image??

[Cloudwatcher]

I checked out your image against Starry night pro and there was a comet in the area at the time of your image.........though not Comet Palmer I'm afraid.........

The position does not match exactly but this could be due to Starry night being set for my location and or bad orientation on my part. Anyway,the Comet is Gunn 65p (a cheap one ) as shown on the attached screen shot with your object's position overlayed. Comet or not I rather like your widefield image.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Interesting image. Looks like a galaxy but we all know there is no galaxy in that area. It also looks like a comet and apparently there was/is one (Gunn) in that area when the image was taken.

[stem1989]

whatever it is it looks interesting

[osbourne one-nil]

Thanks everyone - just supposing it was Comet Gunn/Palmer (as I'd like it to be known from now on).....would a 5min exposure at ISO800 possibly be able to record something that faint? I'm guessing not?

[Shibby]

Comets can be very bright indeed. We're expected 2 naked-eye comets this year, I can't wait for the first (PanSTARRS) in March!

However, as Michael has already said this is definitely an internal reflection which is very common with bright objects and long exposures.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Comet 65P Gunn is listed as being mag 17.7 or thereabouts. That can be ruled out safely.

http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/20130105n.html