Rather than have the software track on a star like I normally do, I decided to have it track on the comet instead. Boy am I glad I did. I’ve seen these kinds of photos before, but never taken one. Comet 8P/Tuttle is moving so fast against the background of stars that in the 16 minutes it took to take this image (66 x 15s) you can see the background stars moving while the comet stays nice and center. Comet Holmes, which I’ve imaged innumerable times, really wouldn’t move in the time spans that I was taking images. It was clearly moving day to day, but it might only move twice as far as this in a day.
Anyway, I took a number of other images tonight, but I’m going to go outside and see if I can see any of the meteor shower and then go to bed. I’ll process tomorrow evening, if I have time.
Update: I went outside for about 15 minutes - that’s all I could take - and saw 4 meteors. The first was the best - it was bright blue streaking through Cassiopeia, then broke into several smaller fragments before disappearing. The others weren’t nearly as exciting (though one was green). Particularly since it’s 20°F out right now with a little bit of a breeze. I’m off to bed. Let me know if anyone stayed/got up to watch and saw anything exciting. Or maybe you shouldn’t - I’m not sure I want to know what I missed.
