Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) on the morning of December 10, 2021, with a 200mm telephoto lens for a field of view of 10° x 6.8°. The tail appears to be about 3.5° long here. Taken about 6:30 am MST with the comet as high as it would be, though the sky is already beginning to brighten with the blue of dawn twilight. The distinctive cyan tint of a comet's coma is prominent. The comet was in Serpens at the time, with the magnitude 2.6 star Alpha Sepentis (aka Unukalhai) at far right (I framed the image to include the star). The reddish double star 47 Serpentis is below the comet. This is a stack of 4 x 2-minute exposures at f/2.8 (wide open) with the 200mm Canon EF lens on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800. The comet has trailed a bit over the 4 minutes of exposure time as it was just past its closest to Earth and moving quite quickly eastward toward the Sun at this time. Taken from home in southern Alberta.
Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) on the morning of December 10, 2021, with a 28mm wide-angle lens for a field of view of 65° x 46°. The comet is at far left, in the east, to the left of the bluish band of Zodiacal Light in the southeast in the pre-dawn sky. The Light was fairly obvious to the eye but is partly lost here in the skyglow from the lights of the town of Bassano and with some bands of red airglow as well lighting the sky. Arcturus is at top; Spica is at far right. The Zodiacal Light follows the ecliptic, so with the comet north of the Zodiacal Light, it shows how its orbit was inclined steeply to the ecliptic. The comet was closest to Earth and crossing the ecliptic plane heading south 2 days after the date of this image. Taken about 6:00 am MST. The distinctive cyan tint of a comet's coma is prominent. The comet was in Serpens at the time. This is a stack of 4 x 1-minute exposures at f/2.8 with the 28-70mm Canon RF lens on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800. The ground comes from a single exposure to minimize blurring. The rest of the sky stacked with a Median stack mode to help eliminate satellite trails. Taken from home in southern Alberta.
