On Comet, on Cupi....

Wrong Comet, sorry.

I work with a bunch of photographers and people that really enjoy being outside.  Living in NM makes it easy to be outside, especially in the colder part of the year.  I'm not a real go getter to be outside from late June through September.  I don't really get along with mid to upper 90's so I don't go out of my way to hike around in that weather.  Anyhow, a couple of the guys I work with got out to see Comet pan-STARRS earlier this week.  The photos were great so I went out the following night.  Earlier this year I had scouted out a parking lot on the east side of town at the foothills of the Sandia mountians that has a great view of the whole Rio Grande valley.  It was a great spot for viewing the comet.

I set up around sunset and learning from the guys that were out the previous night I knew to wait until it got dark.  After a while I felt like a tour guide with all the people stopping by asking "Where's the comet?"  I think they were expecting something a bit smaller than the one that went over Russia a few weeks ago.  I was afraid that the clouds would move in taking away any chance of seeing it.  You can see from the photo that there are clouds all around and at times we had to wait for the clouds to move out of the way.  The comet is in the upper quarter of the image just to the left of center.  You should be able to see it by double clicking on the image, expanding it.

Once we could see it, with binoculars, I had to point out which landmark to line up on to assist at least a half dozen people in finding it.  My binoculars were busy all night, but not with me.  That was okay, I had my camera to play with.  I made a number of different exposures experimenting with settings until I found a combination I liked, a huge advantage of digital over film.  I have several images but wanted to share this one because I like the coloring of the sky post sunset. Living at this altitude along with low humidiy make for great seeing conditions.  The farthest city lights are between 12 and 15 miles away and the mountain making up the lower right horizon is just over 60 miles away.

Enjoy.

Thank you for stopping by,

Mark