This was taken the other night (30th December) at our local darkish sky site, at Mangrove Mountain, between 9:30pm and 10pm local time.

Conditions were great early on, which let me capture this widefield view with both comets. Clouds spoiled the opportunity to get a close-up image of them through my ED80.

Taken with my Canon 350D + Sigma 17-70mm lens (@ 33mm), f/4.0. Piggybacked on top of my ED80 on EQ6, auto-guided with a DMK21AU04.

The shot is a stack of 4x 120s exposures @ ISO800, ICNR on. Added and DDP in ImagesPlus, gradient removal and noise reduction in Photoshop.
The second image is annotated showing the objects in the FOV.

I'm glad to have captured this image, but was disappointed not to be able to do more during the night.

They're too big to upload here (200kb), so some links:
Two Comets - 8P/Tuttle and 17P/Holmes
Annotated

Thanks for looking.

__________________
Mike
. mikesalway.com.au - Astronomy and Photography by Mike Salway
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Fantastic. Sharp with a lovely horizon. Really beautiful.

Kind regards
Matt

Hi Mike
Very nice widefield, great job.

Hi Mike you have a Fantastic wide shot of these subjects. with the scenic below gives it a depth of view Simply Beautiful!. Happy New Year's my friend. and Clear Skies.

awesome wide field shot Mike!!!!


Happy NewYear!!!

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

Thanks for showing us a "big picture" view of the two periodics.

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Wow.

__________________
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Sorry for the delayed reply, i've been away for a few days.

Thanks very much for your comments, they're much appreciated.

__________________
Mike
. mikesalway.com.au - Astronomy and Photography by Mike Salway
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Thank you Mike.

Really beautiful. As always.

__________________
clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.

Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"