Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 04/08/2005 from 04:00 to 04:54 UT. This is a composite of 128 fifteen-second exposures - a total exposure of 32 minutes. (The shutter was closed for 10 minutes starting at 04:15 - thus the break in the star trails). This image shows the slightly reddish tail. Images taken with 10" aperture f/4 Meade LXD55 Schmidt-Newtonian reflector, and a Meade Deep Sky Imager (DSI) 1-shot color CCD camera. The original fov is 16.6 by 12.5 arc-min, but the composite was enlarged and cropped to better show the comet - thus the fov is about 7 arc-min square.
 Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 04/21/2005 from 05:49 to 07:05 UT. This is a composite of 240 fifteen-second exposures - a total exposure of 60 minutes. The outer coma was measured as 2.3 by 1.9 arc-min; elongated away from the sun. The fov is 8.3 by 6.3 arc-min. The comet was judged visually to be the same magnitude as the star in the upper-right corner of the image - GSC 889 852 which is magnitude 13.8. This photo was taken with the comet about 24 degrees from the 12.4 day old moon. The color balance was auto-adjusted by Registax and is less-blue than the other images. It is interesting that the coma is nearly 1 arc-min larger under strong moonlight than it was in a dark sky just 1 week previous. North is up and east is to the left. Photo with 10" f/4 Meade LXD55 and Meade DSI 1-shot color CCD camera. The CCD temperature was 38.3 deg. F. |  |
Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 04/14/2005 from 05:32 to 07:27 UT. This is a composite of 172 thirty-second exposures for a total exposure time of 86 minutes. The outer coma was measured as 1.3 by 1.1 arc-min. The fov of this image is 8.3 by 6.3 arc-min. Same equipment as the photo at the left. The CCD temperature was 41.6 to 40.5 deg. F. 
Comet 9P/Tempel at four different realizations on 4/21/2005 from 05:49 - 07:05 UT. The full-frame width of 16.6 by 12.5 arc-min is shown. A short, wide, fan-shaped tail is revealed in the high-contrast black & white rendition. |
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