Winking Wirtanen

[Buzzard75]

I can FINALLY say with 100% confidence that I was able to locate 46P/Wirtanen. The last few times I've tried with binoculars, I thought I had seen it, but wasn't absolutely sure. Last night, no doubt about it. I could see it with averted vision from my Bortle 5-6 front yard. I could also easily locate it with a small pair of binoculars. I looks very similar to a nebula or a galaxy. I also managed another first last night and got a couple of pictures of a comet. The first one is a single 13-second exposure at ISO3200 using my Canon 750D and an EF-S 18-55mm lens at 55mm. The second image is 10x10s exposures with the same camera, lens and focal length, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. I didn't really feel like getting out my Skyguider Pro and messing with polar alignment so I could do longer exposures, but maybe I should have. Still, turned out pretty good and I'm happy that I can finally say I've seen it and have the image to prove it.

Tell me it doesn't look like a smiley face winking at you!

 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Congrats on that capture

[Davey-T]

Good catch, if that tree wasn't there you would probably have caught asteroid Juno as well

Dave    

[Pete Presland]

Congratulations on finding and capturing comet Wirtanen. Having spent quite a few nights scanning that region of the sky recently, those stars seem very familiar to me now.