We had an amazing view of the comet. Sunset was close to 20h00 and we first spotted the comet 20h40.
The comet was discovered by Rob. H. McNaught, at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia.
The Siding Spring Survey Website is definitely worth visiting! The site contains animations of the original discovery, fantastic visualizations of the comets orbit, images of the telescopes used as well as detailed descriptions of where to look, what to expect and links to many sites dedicated to Comet McNaught.
There was quite a crowd all the way up the beaches on the west coast as the comet had been front page news that morning
The down side was that there was a howling south easter blowing that made photography near impossible
I would have needed to mount my camera on the Stubby lathe to keep it still - maybe!
You may be able to just see the comet half way between the cloud and the top edge of the pic
This is a selection of both Gigi and my pics
Considering the wind we just took lots of pics and chose the best couple to blog
We trashed most of them!
There is the comet just left of the small cloud
Gigi's camera can take long exposures
Gigi hid in the car out of the wind but on the wrong side of the road with it's passing traffic
Gigi got this one later lying on the boardwalk to try and keep the camera still - look at the grass blowing
The sand was also blowing so hard down there it was painful
Standing up out of the wind and you just got blown around
This is a pic by Gigi looking out over Table Bay - the lights of downtown Cape Town, Table Mountain lit up with four banks of huge spotlights for the festive season, Lions head on the right and the comet just to the right of that
This is my best pic of the same view
As it got darker the cameras really couldn't do justice to the comet
Visually the tail was three to four times what the camera showed - totally spectacular
See the post of some better pictures taken the evening afterwards
1 comment:
Hey Dennis, how are you. I stay in Cape Town till the end of March and I also could see the comet. I was in Camps Bay at this time. It was so wonderfull to see this comet. I also made some picture. You can see my best picture at my blog :o)
Have a nice day *Andrea*
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