Open night and photo attempts

I had scheduled an Observatory open night for Friday, Nov. 2. The weather and observing forecasts agreed that Friday night would be, at the very least, a very good night to view Comet 17P/Holmes and that's just the way things turned out. Friday night, for a good couple of hours after sunset, boasted an outstandingly transparent sky. Because the local daily newspaper, The Record-Courier, was kind enough to run our event announcement and our photo of the comet, we had a very good turnout. In all 37 folks of all ages came to see this most unusual celestial visitor. The century-old telescope performed outstandingly keeping good track on the moving object. We could see at least one background star shining through the huge coma. The sky was so clear that I could make out the Perseus Double Cluster (NGC 884 & NGC 869) with my unaided eyes! A glorious sky, indeed. Visitors asked many questions about comets and the Observatory and seemed to have a very enjoyable evening. The event closed out at 10 PM and I shot a number of sky photos with and without the dome in the foreground -- I need to process those images but they look very promising. With this entry is a medium telephoto shot of the triangle Comet Holmes formed with two of the southern Perseus stars. Got home rather late after a most enjoyable night under the stars.

In the picture: Comet 17P/Holmes floated through the southern portion of constellation Perseus in October and November 2007 as it flared to a million times its normal brightness. It became a naked-eye object and formed an easy-to-spot triangle where normally there was no such figure. The comet is the yellowish orb in the lower left-hand portion of the triangle, seen here near the center of the picture. Image recorded at 10:14 PM, Eastern Standard Time, Nov. 2, 2007. Canon Digital Rebel XT, 10 seconds, 112 mm, f/6.3, ISO 1,600. Photo by James Guilford