Comet Holmes surprised the astronomical world by transforming from a very dim comet to one that was so bright, it could be seen with just your eye with a full moon near it. Known as 17P/Holmes, a large telescope was needed to see the comet before the outburst it underwent on 24 October 2007 that caused it to brighten over 600,000 times its original brightness. In astronimical terms, it brightened from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.5.
I took a number of photographs with my camera attached to Mira, my self-designed and home-made telescope. You can read more about Mira on the section of my web site devoted to its design and construction. I took the photographs from my suburban backyard that has a bright street light shining right down on it. This caused a background color gradient across the image that required extra work to compensate for. I used Adobe Photoshop to combine ten of the images to reduce random noise (grain) generated in the camera and to apply color correction and high pass filtering to create this rendition of the photograph.
Photographer: Rick Scott
Date: November 10, 2007
Time: 9:18 PM MST through 9:21 PM MST
Location: Chandler, Arizona
Camera: Canon EOS 20D digital camera
Lens: Home-made 9.8 inch f/4.63 Lurie-Houghton Telescope
Mount: Losmandy G-11
Exposure: 10 x 10 seconds at f/4.63 (unguided)
Camera Mode: ISO 800 RAW
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS2 for RAW conversion and image processing
Photograph by Rick Scott.
Updated: 11 November 2007