Comet McNaught
Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1)
Clear weather on 10 January 2007 made it possible to observe the comet from London despite its low position in the evening sky.
Although the position of the Comet made it very tricky to observe with the Radcliffe Telescope, Steve Fossey and Stephen Boyle managed to take images - with the telescope pointing just above the horizon.
The above image of the nucleus and inner coma of Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) was obtained with the Radcliffe 24-inch refracting telescope and Wright Instruments AT-1 CCD camera on 10 January 2007. The field is a few arcminutes across; North is up and East is to the left. The 5-second exposure was taken through a narrow-band H2O+ filter. The colourized image uses colours to represent different intensities and highlights detail in the inner coma, but it is otherwise identical to the greyscale image.
The pictures below were taken by Mick Pearson and Thomas Schlichter from Mill Hill Park near the Observatory, from where there is an excellent view of the Western horizon.
The images were taken using a Canon PowerShot A80 with a TC-DC52A Tele-Converter.
Mick Pearson put together an animated GIF image (0.9MB) made up from several of the images taken that evening that shows the comet moving across the evening sky.
AN ANIMATED GIF IMAGE OF THE COMET CAN BE VIEWED BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK...
On the same evening Dr. Francisco Diego took images from Ruskin Park in South London with a Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT:
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