In Today's B&H Deal Zone: Gitzo Systematic Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod with Arca-Type Series 4 Center Ball – Only $899.88 (Save $600.00), More!.Used Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L USM Lens In Stock at B&H – Save $320.00 vs.Still Live: Back to School Apple Deals at B&H - Save Up to $500.00 on a Huge List of Items.Your Wall Says That You Need to Print Something - Get 15% Off Sitewide at Printique.The 130EDT at f/6 couldn’t fit both M46 and M47 in the frame, so I framed the comet with just M46, because I think M46 is a more photogenic cluster. But knowing that if you don’t try you certainly will get nothing, and if you do sometimes you get lucky, I decided to knock off a couple of frames. I was just going to pack it in, since it was about 20F and I was cold, and the moon was really bright, washing out the sky. It’s location turned out to be right between M46 and M47! He quickly found it, expert comet hunter and observer that he is. M46 and M47 were about 25 degrees above the horizon, so Joe got out his wide-angle eyepiece and started scanning for it in his 12-inch Dobsonian. Joe said he has seen a picture of it near open clusters M46 and M47, so he thought it would be somewhere below those, heading down towards the horizon. After the Moon cleared the treeline and started getting really bright, Joe started to pack up, and I casually asked him if he had seen Comet Hartley lately.

I was shooting and testing some equipment and my friend Joe was observing. We had a six hour window of darkness from 6pm until the 3rd quarter Moon rose at about midnight. This was really just another case of lucky serendipity! It was pretty much completely off my radar since it is more than a month past perihelion, when the comet was closest to the Sun, and Earth, and at its best visibility-wise. In fact, I didn’t even know the comet was still around. I had not planned on making this image when I went out to shoot last night. Click on the image or the link to see a high-resolution image. Comet Hartley 2 passes near M46, an open cluster in in the constellation of Puppis.

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