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Photographer:

Michele

Location of Photo:

Baratti, Livorno (Italy)

Date/Time of photo:

August 17th, 2018 ; 11pm

Equipment:

Canon EOS 600D, Pentax 50mm f/2.8 lens, Skywatcher Star Adventurer Traking Mount (SAM)

Description:

Serendipitous capture of the 21P/Giacobini–Zinner comet (bottom left corner) while I was trying to image the Heart and Soul emission Nebulae together with the Double Cluster. It was an experiment because my DSLR camera is not astro-modified, hence it kills around 95% of the red light from the Nebulae. Being in a holiday in a relatively dark site gave me some hopes! Unfortunately the night was very humid and after 45 minutes dew started forming on the camera lens, so I had to stop the collection. Nonetheless I think the "experiment" was quite successful! With some tweaking using Photoshop I managed to pull some red nebulosity out of the two Nebulae's regions. The cherry on the cake was the unexpected capture of the 21P/Giacobini–Zinner comet (left bottom corner) which is now ca. 8 magnitude. Initially I though it was a shooting star that photobombed one of my light frames. After checking that it was in all the frames I realised that it must be real! A quick check on Stellarium and I found out it was indeed a comet!

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