Venus and the Pleiades star cluster are prominent in the center of the image while Mercury is about to set in the low gap. The zodiacal light is also faintly visible.
Upper Lake Mary, Flagstaff, Arizona; 10 April 2023.
Next week the crescent Moon will join the group.
There have been multiple opportunities to photograph planets and other objects in the evening sky during the month of March. Previously I posted photos of four planets and an asteroid in the western sky during twilight using a 24mm wide angle lens.
I tried to capture the four planets again later in the month but was foiled by the bright twilight making it difficult to see the planets that were close to the horizon. So I shifted my strategy and chose to capture just two planets–Venus and Uranus–that were close to each other and high enough above the horizon to not be troubled by twilight. These images were shot with my Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6E lens.
I then turned the camera on the Orion Nebula (M42) to see how well this lens would work on long exposures. The results weren’t too bad–but not great. It will take some practice on my part to get sharp focus and reduce shake and vibration on the tripod and star tracker.
We visited the Crane Petroglyph Site at V Bar V Ranch over the weekend. We were fortunate that the volunteer docent on site that day was local expert Ken Zoll who discovered that the thousand-year old site was a solar calendar that marked ancestral Puebloan planting and harvesting cycles.
More information about the site and Ken Zole can be found in the article at Green Living Magazine.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) continues to be a interesting object in the night sky for photography, telescopes, and binoculars. Unfortunately, it never got bright enough to be an easy object for the unaided eye. One could sometimes see it when viewing it from very dark locations without the Moon present–but usually only with averted vision. At its brightest it was reported to have reached magnitude +5. The comet should fade rather rapidly in February and may be as faint as magnitude +8 by the end of the month.
The comet made its closest approach to the sun on 12 January 2023 (1.11 AU; 166 million km) and its closest approach to Earth on 01 February 2023 (0.28 AU; 42 million km). See the included Solar System map that shows the location of the comet relative to Earth or visit TheSkyLive.com for an interactive version.
Here are a few of the better images I have been able to capture of the comet over the past few weeks. These have used a variety of lenses but always the same camera, tripod, and star tracker.
These photos were taken on 22 January 2023 using a manual focus Nikon NIKKOR 80-200mm f/4 AI-S zoom lens. This lens has the advantage of having a hard stop at ∞ making it very easy to focus. Image stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker.
Both of these images of the comet show the tail (pointing up) and the antitail (pointing down). From Wikipedia:
An antitail is an apparent spike projecting from a comet’s coma which seems to go towards the Sun, and thus geometrically opposite to the other tails: the ion tail and the dust tail. However, this phenomenon is an optical illusion that is seen from the Earth…
And here is a time-lapse movie of the motion of the comet during the period 0359 through 0435 MST.
Time-lapse video of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) from 0358–0454 MST 22 January 2023.
A few days later I was able to capture both the dust tail and the ion tail. Stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker. This was shot with the Nikon NIKKOR ED 180mm f/2.8 AI-S manual focus lens.
On 10 February the comet appeared near both the planet Mars and the Pleiades star cluster. Also visible are the dark dust lanes of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Photos shot with Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G. Stacking was done using Starry Sky Stacker.
Time-lapse video of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) and Mars from 1926–2029 MST 10 February 2023.
Lastly, a time-lapse video of the motion of the comet also shows a plethora of satellites moving across the sky.
Later this week the comet will pass close to the Hyades star cluster. If skies are clear I’ll be back out shooting more photos of the comet.
Note: Both of the videos incorrectly label the comet ZTH rather than ZTF.
We have had extensive cloudiness here for the past few weeks. The atmospheric rivers (AR) that have been causing excessive rain in California have brought lesser amounts of rain and snow to northern Arizona–but a lot of clouds. Consequently, I have been unable to do any astrophotography imaging for several weeks.
Finally, however, we had a clear night and I wanted to see if I could get some good images of comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) in the morning sky. The only problem was a nearly full Moon.
Undaunted, I awoke early in the morning and drove to one of my preferred locations for shooting astro images. Along the way, I ran into patches of ground fog. I was worried that the fog would prevent me from getting good sky photos. The real problem, however, was the bright Moon. I shoot several images before giving up because the sky was too bright.
As a consolation, I decided to shoot photographs of the low-lying fog that was illuminated by the nearly-full Moon. I like these better that the comet images–but I will try to photograph the comet again after the Moon has moved out of the morning sky.