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Photographing Comet Hale-Bopp
"autocorrect" the exposures, it will badly overexpose them, producing a medium gray sky -- yuck. You might also explain to them
that the comet exhibits two tails - a bright yellow dust tail, and a dimmer blue ion tail going off at an angle to the dust tail.
12.) If the lab is incapable of producing a reasonably dark sky, try a different lab. A good lab may be able to enhance the dimmer
blue tail a bit to make it more visible.
How'd they turn out?
The pics should be good enough to impress your family and friends, especially if any of them tried taking pics of the comet with a
point and shoot camera. Even more so if they used the built-in flash. (Don't laugh! One of your relatives did this just last night!)
If you want better pictures than this, you need one or more of the following things:
Have your film push-processed
Fuji Super G 800 pushes well to 1600. Contrast and grain increase slightly, but higher contrast is good in comet photos and Fuji
800's grain is fine enough that it can afford to be pushed.
A darker location
On top of a mountain, hours away from a city would be ideal.
A tracking mount for your camera
These counteract the rotation of the Earth, allowing you to leave the shutter open for minutes at a time without star trails.
If you'd like info about tracking (barndoor) mounts, or if you want to be really envious of some terrific comet photos, see Brian
Rachford's excellent Wide-Field Astrophotography Page.
Good luck!
Links
● Bill Hutchinson's comet images, an extensive collection from someone who lives on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula
Copyright 1997 Russ Arcuri.
arcuri@borg.com
Reader's Comments
Hey- I took pictures of the lunar eclipse a while back with my Rebel XS and my 35-80 with a minimum aperature of about 4.
Jupiter was barely visible below the moon, but I didn't think that that would be a problem. I made most of the exposures at 20-30
seconds. When I got the pics back from the lab, the first thing I noticed was the large white blotch over the moon! I guess it was
jupiter, but I am sure that it was just barely visible. Can you help explain this? --ben yaffe
-- Ben Yaffe, April 6, 1997
I've gotten a couple questions via e-mail about photographing the moon and the comet in the same frame later this week
http://www.photo.net/astro/intro (3 of 6)7/3/2005 2:14:43 AM