BrianH

By BrianH

Comet Panstarrs & M31

I saw the comet on Tuesday night when we had clear skies. Unfortunately I did not take the camera with me that time. The sky was not as clear tonight, but I went out to try again and it took a while to find it. The pylon cable is in frame because I used it as a guide to point the camera and it adds a bit of contrast. This 10s exposure seemed to be the best. If you go large you can see the background stars are actually short lines - that is how much the Earth rotates in 10s.

Coment Panstarrs is the blob of light on the right with the tail fanning upwards. It is about 121 million miles from Earth.
Go left towards the centre of the frame to find M31 the Andromeda galaxy which is 2.5 billion light years from Earth. For what it's worth, 121 million miles (195 million km) equates to 0.00002 light years. That is far away, but in cosmological terms it is still relatively near-by.

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