On the hunt for comets...

A few weeks ago I went on the hunt for comet A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas, I turned up about 2 hours too early as I'd got my timing wrong due to listening to the BBC news lol.

Anyhow I was stood in the middle of a field, as light faded and the cold crept in, I was so happy when I saw the comet, the shots in this post was all done using my iPhone 14 pro, hand held too, I am quite impressed with the shots, it won't replace my Sony A7iii, but a great camera if it's all you have with you.

A beautiful walk in my local countryside led me to this path, to my left was a field with some trees behind and a view over Wentworth village, I knew the comet would make an appearance in the west which was directly over the village.

Using Starwalk 2 on my phone, an app that I have used for years, I kept looking to see roughly where the comet would be, Venus made an appearance, but no comet to be seen, at lease with the naked eye.

To make things worse, there was a supermoon rising behind me, this made the chance of seeing the comet even worse, on other nights I would have been happy to see such a fantastic moon, but on this night, it was a hinderance.

I fired a few shots off and finally got to see the comet, I couldn't make it out with the naked eye, the moon was just so bright, but the comet did get more visible as we reached galactic twilight.
The above shot was done handheld on my phone, all light is from the moon.

I'd gone to my location straight from work, so by the time I saw the comet I was cold, tired and hungry, but YES, I'd got the comet, I need to invest in some sort of popup chair to take with me on trips like there where I have to do lots of hanging around, standing in a field in the cold does take it out of you, especially when you are there for around 2-3 hours.

I hope you've liked this post.

All the best :-)