Aug 202017
Last night I took images of a comet. My standard exposure length of 300 seconds was too long and during that period the comet moved enough to smear into a streak rendering the images useless for analysis. The video is an animation of 11 300 second exposures and shows the amount of movement over 55 minutes. In this case, North is to the top.
Currently, the comet is between Mars and Jupiter and above the plane of the ecliptic but headed south to where most of its orbit lies.
I will try a different tracking technique and exposure duration later tonight to see if I can get accurate astrometric data to report to the MPC and to get a prettier picture of the tail.