The comet was easily visible from my porch in Westlake Village in the early evening. It was a little fuzz ball, like a round white cotton ball or a big out-of-focus star. I decided to find a darker area, so I lugged my 8-inch Celestron and camera equipment into the Santa Monica Mountains to the south. I drove for about 15 minutes and found a wide turnout along Latigo Canyon Road, east of Kanan-Dume Road, well removed from any nasty street lights and civilization. The elevation here was about 2000 feet. There was a light breeze, no clouds, low humidity, and a wonderful temperature of 68F. The sky was dark, but not really dark. Mountain ridges to the north and east helped a little to block the light pollution from the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles. The Milky Way was dimly visible, and Comet Holmes was about halfway up from the northeastern horizon.

I set up the telescope, and the comet almost filled up the field of view afforded by the 40mm eyepiece. The comet had a bright midsection and a dimmer halo surrounding it, but a sharp outline or outer boundary to the “halo”. To photograph the comet, I needed to align the telescope to due north and plug in the clock drive to the X-terra’s DC outlet. This would help to keep star trails to a minimum as the telescope compensated for the earth’s rotation. I don’t have the equipment (yet) to take photographs “through” the scope with my Rebel XT digital camera, so I mounted the camera onto the top of the Celestron. This is called “piggybacking.” The camera will move with the telescope and its clock drive, so I could take exposures of several minutes or more if I wanted to without star trails (or blurry comet trails).

I had the Canon 70-200mm zoom 2.8 lens attached. It is a beast, and I had to stick a counterbalance weight onto the opposite side of the scope to keep it happy. I took a total of about 50 exposures of the comet, and a few of the Pleiades. I knew that if I was going to have photo problems, then it would be due to focusing issues. The exact spot for infinity on the lens is an extremely precise position. I zoomed in on a bright star (Capella) several times during the two-hour session to make sure that the lens was focused as perfectly as possible. Still, there were some shots which were out of focus. I played around at 400, 800, and 1600 ISO, and shot mostly at 800. The lens was kept wide open at 2.8, and I shot exposures ranging from about 15 seconds to two minutes. I found that at 800 ISO, the background sky began to become too bright or washed out for exposures of a minute or more. Despite the rudimentary “eyeballing” of the telescope mount for setup, the scope followed the stars well and there was minimal drifting. At full zoom (at 200mm, an equivalent of 320mm with the Rebel XT), the comet wasn’t particularly large, but it stood out prominently in the star field.

Several of the best shots are below, with a crop and zoom-in for one of them. On the camera’s display screen, the star colors were stark and impressive. The star colors on my laptop screen seem muted and dull. Hmmm.

I didn’t have a strong hunch one way or the other on this day. I elected to go for the north target, as tornado potential was quite a bit better up there. Unfortunately, we had a good six-hour drive ahead of us. Fortunately, sunset was about 9-10 hours away. We watched a pathetic LP-ish updraft sputter for a little while near Watford City, ND. Other stronger stuff was moving eastward in Montana towards the northeastern counties around Wolf Point. I asked the group if they wanted to go after that activity, even though it was unlikely that there would be much daylight remaining once we got there, and that it would make a chase to the Siouxland the next day out of the question. We decided that since we were already 80 percent of the way there, we might as well stick it out and go northwest, young man. At Williston we headed west on U.S. 2 into Montana’s Roosevelt County and Fort Peck Indian Reservation. Shortly after reaching the reservation, we saw some nice CG activity to the west, and we passed a lady who was crying next to the road because her “ride” had just abandoned her there. This was the middle of nowhere! Well, actually, it wasn’t too far from Culbertson, but she was outside, her boyfriend or whatever was speeding away, and storms, possibly severe, were brewing to the west. Not good.

Anyway, we’ll never know what happened to her.

We neared the storms a little after sunset (after 9 p.m. MDT), and a good one was close to Hwy 2 west of Brockton. I took a road north a mile or two (not sure if it was 344 or 251) and stopped to set up. The cell to the west looked pretty good, with smooth striations, a bit of a lowering on the right side of the updraft base, and a good deal of CG activity. It was going to be a good show and a fantastic opportunity for some lightning photography.

I got some decent shots, including one where the lightning may be illuminating a slender funnel cloud beneath a prominent lowering. Or, the “white filament” is actually lightning. It is difficult to determine. A cell in the county north of us was tornado-warned a little later on, and our storm looked to have a rotating updraft, so a small tornado was certainly not out of the question.

As the activity neared it forced us to blast east, and we played tag with some heavy rain and lots of lightning on the way to Williston for the night. Beautiful thunder blasts crashed through the motel lobby as we checked in, and Brad didn’t seem to be too excited about being out there unloading the van.

As it turned out, a severe cell moved SE through the northern NE Panhandle on this evening. It was likely an awesome storm with gorgeous structure during daylight hours….and we WERE in perfect position to see its eventual development while we were enjoying lunch in Chadron. I was somewhat perturbed that I had elected to go for the MT/ND target and did all of that driving just for a nighttime storm, but that’s how it goes sometimes. On another day, it might be a big tornado event for the northern target in the stronger shear, and I don’t want to be sitting two states farther south watching an HP cell without a tornado should that occur. I did manage some cool photos in the fading light, and maybe even a pic of a funnel or tornado, so I can’t complain too much! On the 3rd we had to blow off the Siouxland target (where there were some supercells, but no tornadoes), and we motored all the way south to northeastern Colorado and saw some unimpressive storms south of Iliff. (See last image below.) It had been a long two days already, and I was glad to get to the motel in Burlington.

additional lightning images from Brockton, MT:

small updraft south of Iliff, CO, on July 3…this day does not deserve its own entry, so there