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COMET MACHHOLZ C/2004 Q2 - The year 2004 was a busy one for comet discoveries and comet observers. Many like Comet NEAT C/2001 Q4, were discovered by automated robot telescopes that seek near Earth objects. Comet Machholz, on the other hand, was discovered the old-fashioned way by Don Machholz during the early morning of August 27th, 2004. The story of his discovery is here The projected path of Comet Machholz showed it passing right next to the open star cluster M45, The Pleiades, in early January 2005. Imagers around the globe awaited this heavenly encounter. As the date approached, I checked the weather forecast. But, as was the case with much of the last half of 2004 here in Santa Fe, it looked like I was going to be clouded out. I planned this to be the test run for my Digital SLR, the Canon 10D. I had never used it for astro-imaging and I was eager to see if I could get a good wide angle shot. I imaged over the course of three nights using the 10D piggy-back on my Takahashi FC-76 and EM-1 mount. I ran the camera with a remote timing device hoping to luck out and get a gap in the overcast. This frame was the only useable one out of almost 100 exposures. Thursday January 6th, 2005 at 11:28PM MST. A two minute exposure at ISO 1600 and 85mm zoom at f/5.6 processed and cropped in Photoshop.
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