17P/Holmes comet outburst. Day 1.

Unique sight! Very faint comet suddenly brightened from magnitude ~17^m up to brilliant 2.5^m (for about one million times!), and became perfectly visible by unaided eye even in light-polluted cities. And by the happy coincidence, comet was in the coverage sector of my balcony! 8-) Weather conditions wasn't good, but i've successed to catch several openings in the clouds.

Optics	Mizar TAL-1  (4.4" Newton F=800mm 1:7.3)
Exposure Details	HDR commposition of three frames (15x1sec, 11x4sec and one 20-minutes expositions @ISO100). 20-min frame was autiguided by cometary core.
Mount	EQ6 PRO SynScan equatorial mount.
Camera/Guider	Canon 350D (modified with Baader IR-cut filter.), Guider camera is QHY6 CCD.
Filter	none
Date	Oct 24, 2007, 18:15(UTC)
Location	Center of 300k pop. town.

©2000-2007 All images, text and software are copyright Igor Chekalin