04/27/24

 Today's image is another astrophotography one that I have been trying to learn and get better at.  I have been working with this image off and on since I took it on the 4th of this month.  This is Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks that has been able to be seen with binoculars or a telescope if you know where to look.  When I captured it, it was visible shortly after sunset in the constellation of Aries and somewhat near Jupiter, which appears as a star in the image due to the longer exposure.  I used a 70mm lens as using anything larger made it very difficult to spot due to the comet being incredibly dim to the naked eye.  This is a combination of 12 ten second exposures, which were stacked and then processed in my photo program and also using a gradient extractor due to the uneven light from the horizon.  It's not perfect and I have a lot to learn but I was fairly happy with what i was able to get.  If you look closely you can see faint bits of the tail extending out, I wish I had been able to pull out more of that but the quality was degrading.  I am not sure if the comet is still visible, it was getting lower on the horizon every day.  I should have captured it in January at least.  At this point in time it was too low too get very many images before it was gone.