I tried. I bought a star tracker about 15 years ago; it's a tripod attachment that rotates your camera during the exposure to keep it in sync with the stars as they move across the sky. It allows for longer exposures, pin sharp stars etc. Well, I never used it. So I decided yesterday afternoon to break it out, watch some YouTube videos and give it a go. I'm not able to see this comet with my eyes even with my contacts in and really wanted to try to do better.
I headed out to the backyard, got the tripod setup, oriented the tracker to the north, found Polaris and got it lined up in the scope. Then I fiddled with the camera figuring out how to move it around on the ballhead, it's a bit clunky and will certainly take more practice, way more than a few hours that I allowed myself. Anyway, I flicked the power switch on and decided to see if I could get a 30 second shot. Usually after 10 seconds the stars clearly start streaking. Taking a deep breath I hit the shutter button on my remote. Waiting, waiting... And bam! I couldn't believe it, but it worked... On the first shot. I was thrilled and immediately hooked on this night photography thing.
So, next I had to find the comet. Like I said earlier I couldn't see it with my naked eye. Using binoculars I found it much more to the west than two nights earlier. So, I got the camera rig adjusted and started shooting.
First I tried 30 second shots. Then 45 second shots. Then one minute shots. The stars were all tack sharp. Still quite amazed I figured no matter how these turned out since the comet was so dim and tiny, the mere use of the tracker was a fantastic success. Why didn't I try this sooner?
Now feeling confident I started pushing out 90 second shots, and they were still sharp. Only issue were the planes and satellites photo-bombing the exposures!!
After a couple of hours of shooting, I decided to look at the images and try to get a post up. What I found was that I need way more practice in editing night sky images and blending them into cool composites. So, please take my feeble night sky editing skills lightly... I certainly need more practice there.
The images of the comet were all taken at 70mm. I have a 70-200mm lens that's comparable in weight to the 24-70mm I used that I now wished I used instead. So, I went back out two nights later and decided to shoot the 70-200mm on my Canon R7 which has an APS-C sensor giving a cropped view thus a larger image. I decided to blend that in with the first image you see with the old farmhouse.
I hope you enjoy the images as I work my way through this night sky photography journey.
