A portrait of three comets each passing the Pleiades and in a similar location relative to the star cluster, but taken over a span of 14 years. And I shot the first (Machholz) and latest (Wirtanen) comets with the same lens, a 200mm telephoto, from my backyard in Alberta, while the middle image of Lovejoy I shot with a 135mm telephoto for a wider view than the others, and it was shot from New Mexico. On the left is Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) discovered in 2004 by amateur astronomer Don Machholz, at centre is Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) disovered in 2014 by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy from Australia, while on the right is Comet 46P/Wirtanen, discovered in 1948 by professional astronomer Carl Wirtanen. All the comets became bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, though only just. But all were fine photogenic targets, with Lovejoy sporting the long blue ion tail. I shot Comet Machholz with a Canon Rebel 300D cropped-frame camera, Comet Lovejoy with a full-frame Canon 5D Mark II, and Comet Wirtanen with a Canon 6D MkII full-frame camera. So with the different sensor sizes and the use of two different lenses the images scale is not the same over the three images.
Comet Wirtanen 46P on December 15, 2018 taken in the blue-sky moonlight, with the first quarter Moon still well up in the southwest, and when the comet was passing near the Pleiades star cluster, Messier 45, in Taurus. Some high cloud and haze was just beginning to move in, thwarting any further efforts to shoot the scene under darker skies later that night after moonset. The comet was nearest to Earth on this weekend, Dec 15-16, 2018. This is a stack of 2 x 90-second exposures aligned on the stars, and 2 x 30-second exposures aligned on the comet and blended in for the core of the comet coma to reduce its intensity and size. All with the 200mm Canon L lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800. Lens focused with the Bhatinov mask. Diffraction spikes added with Astronomy Tools action, for photogenic effect. They look pretty!
This is Comet Wirtanen 46P in Taurus on December 14/15, 2018 accompanied by a meteor, caught by chance of course. The meteor has left a yellowish “smoke” cloud. Yellowish Aldebaran and the Hyades are at bottom, the pink California Nebula (NGC 1499) is at top, in Perseus, while the blue Pleiades are at centre. They form a nice colour contrast with the cyan-green comet. The Taurus Dark Clouds of interstellar dust are at left. Comet Wirtanen was two days before its closest approach to Earth and nearly at its brightest. It was visible to the unaided eye. I got a chance to capture this and other views after Chinook clouds cleared off near midnight on Dec 14/15. This is a stack of 5 x 2-minute exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera at ISO 800 with the Sigma 50mm lens at f/2.8. The meteor is from one of those frames. The camera was on the Star Adventurer tracker.
