Zooming in on Holmes in the morning

Another beautiful morning, so I tried my first shots with the Canon Digital Rebel mounted on the LX90. I then combined three different views through a wide angle lens and zoom to show how the comet appears to the naked eye, approximately how it looks in binoculars, and finally, how it appears in a small ttelescope. (The last shot isn't through a telescope, however, but simply a 300mm lens. )

Here's how Comet Holmes looked through the slot in the observatory dome around 4 am.

Not sure what you're seeing? Holmes is part of that triangle of stars near the center. It's the one that looks a little fuzzy. Click here to view an image with labels.

Oh - and of you've been watching Holmes in the evening you may feel this is a little bass-ackwards, It is. Holmes is circumpolar, so in the early evening when it is rising in the Northeast, Capella is near the horizon and the comet looks as if it is in the left corner of the triangle. In the morning Capella has circled overhead and is now high above the comet which is on the right side of the little triangle as you look at it. (Picture is a 30 second exposure at ISO 400 with a Canon Digital Rebel at F3.5 and a focal lenth of 18mm. Camera was mounted piggyback on my Meade LX90. The sides of the slot in the dome frame it.)

This next shot gives a rough idea of what the comet looks like in wide field binoculars of about 10X. Same set-up, but the lens is now at 135mm and F5. With binoculars Comet Holmes starts to become weirdly pretty.

And this last shot gives a pretty good idea of what you see through a small telescope, though it's actually shot with a 300mm lens on the Canon Digital Rebel.