Last night I actually watched the comet with a telescope rather than relentlessly photograph it. I used a 4.25-inch (108 mm) f/3.7 reflector whose mirror I ground and polished as a teenager over 55 years ago. With a 24 mm eyepiece in the drawtube the magnification was about 17x.
One takeaway from the visual observing was just how many satellites were continually zooming through the field of view. We are rapidly losing an unimpeded view of the night sky.
Of course, I also had a camera set up. I used a Sony A7iii camera and a Nikon 180mm f/2.8 ED Ai-s lens.
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Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), 21 Oct. |
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Photobombed by satellites! |
The orbital velocity of a comet can be quite high as it nears the sun. The following animation shows that the motion against background stars is evident over a period of only 20 minutes.
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20-min time span. |