Lately the astronomy world's been buzzing over Comet C/2007 N3, also known as Comet Lulin. It's grown rather bright, with naked-eye visibility. It also sports a rather greenish coma and has a long tail.
Comets are usually short-lived phenomena for observers - although some of them return on a periodic basis, most of them will only be visible once in an amateur astronomer's lifetime. They also can surprise us with erratic behaviour, so it's always fun to watch them.
I took this image two nights ago. It consists of 96 subframes (24 in each red, green, blue, and luminance), only 30 seconds each. Although the total exposure time was 48 minutes, with the added time for focusing, exposure downloads, guide star acquisition, etc., the total elapsed time between the first and last image was almost 2 1/2 hours. Since the comet is moving across the sky quite rapidly, I decided to make a little movie showing the motion as well. Click Here to see this image in higher resolution, and to view the comet movie.
I'm not sure I'll get another chance to image this one, as clouds have taken over the Tucson skies and my workload remains heavy. But I'm very happy to have had a chance to snap a brief picture of this celestial friend as he sped by!
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