Well tonight I felt the odds were against me as I set out to capture an image of Comet, Pan-STARRS in conjunction with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The skies were quite cloudy at first making it very hard to polar align my Losmandy GEM mount. My latitude was only 37.5 degrees and the setting Sun was quite bright adding to the difficulty of seeing the Comet and Galaxy both of which appeared about equal in brightness.
What I did have in my favor was that I had cleared a spot a few weeks ago with a nice North Western horizon. Up on a rocky ridge that had been logged last year. I had anticipated this night far in advance. Owls and bats were my companions as night fell, and slowly the clouds parted allowing me a bit of time to align my mount, a dark, lonely place but if I was going to see this beautiful sight and more importantly make an image, this is where I had to be.
The image was made with a Canon 60Da Camera a 50mm Carl Zeiss lens at f2.0, an ISO of 1000 and a 20 second exposure. Piggy Back method was used on a Losmandy G-8 GEM mount. Image was made on 04/04/2013 at 20:56:28 local time in Jadwin Mo.
Beautiful, awe inspiring sight! Gotta get out and try despite the odds!
As always I hope you like my images and are free to use them, if you wish!