On this Tuesday evening I joined a couple of buddies for a one-hour ride up north to shoot the night sky. We set up near the Chuchupate Ranger Station, not too far west of Frazier Park. One of the primary objectives was to photograph Comet Catalina. We arrived around sunset, nervously watching some high clouds out west. I took a bunch of wide-angle shots with the 15mm lens, several of these mounted on the scope to reduce star trailing on the long exposures. Unfortunately, the thin high clouds eventually covered more than half of the sky, and the cold air (near 30F) was giving us the chills. Comet Catalina was scheduled to rise a couple of hours before midnight, but we made our way down the hill before that due to the cold and clouds.
The first three shots below are courtesy of my friend Roger Willco. He tried my long lens in combination with his astro-tracker and aimed it at a dim comet in Pegasus (another PanStarrs comet), the Pleiades, and Orion’s sword.
See that little green smudge that is a little left of center in the first image of the three above? That is the faint comet.
Here are my Chuchupate night sky offerings:
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