A Comet in the Dawn

9/03/2023. Comet Nishimura formed up with M44, M67, and Venus in the dawn. The forecast looked good. Who am I to resist? I reconfigured the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer ("SWSA", OK?) to carry the Sigma 105 and Canon R6 and waited up till 4:45 to drive over to the access lot and set up. It's not much of a comet, small, coming in fast and leaving fast, headed for a reasonably bright perihelion but with terrible geometry for viewing at its supposed best. Tonight will be my first and probably only look at it.

Click to make it big. Look for the comet at upper left. Also check out M44 at upper right
and M67 tucked in next to Venus in the lower right.

That's 91 five-second exposures at F2.8 and ISO 3200. Mostly. There are some variations thrown in since I was shooting groups of 10-20 at the same EV but at different ISOs, F-stops, and exposures. In the moonlight, amid the glare from metropolitan Granite Falls, and considering the haze over the river, here's what the individual subframes looked like:

Eh? Eh? Pretty good processing, eh?

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