There was a comet to look for this evening — Comet Wirtanen. It was about as bright and close to the Earth as it was going to get today, barely visible to the naked eye. When I reached an excellent dark spot on the top of San Nicolas Island (elevation 900 feet), the comet was overhead, looking a lot like a little green splotch near Taurus. My plan was to photograph the comet in about an hour, after moonset. In the meantime, I would take wide-angle pictures of the sky and hope to catch a lingering Gemini meteor. The peak of the meteor shower had been the night prior.
I took a lot of 30-second shots in different directions. I saw a handful of dim meteors, but none that were great and none that shot through the camera frame during an exposure. The weather was getting chilly and breezy, with a moist wind from the northwest. And, my wide-angle lens was fogging up quickly and constantly after each wipe to dry it off. A few of the shots below show the effects of a fogged-over lens. And, the comet is barely visible in the star-filled shots.
This was getting aggravating. I switched to the long lens as the moon set, and was hoping that this lens would not fog up quickly. Its long lens hood might help in this regard. To shoot the comet, I needed to point the camera and lens almost straight up. The tripod that I have out here on the island isn’t really made for such a heavy load, and it was a huge pain to try to find the comet and to lock on it. And, low clouds and fog started to form just to the west and northwest! I had had enough! So, sorry, no zoomed-in Comet Wirtanen images by me on this night.
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