Ken and I have been trying to grab photos of Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) over the past week and finally had success last night. In case you have not heard, comet Leonard is a very long period comet and only circles the Sun about every 80,000 years. It was discovered by astronomer Gregory Leonard earlier this year. It’s visible through binoculars low in the southwest just after sunset. There are not many places to see it at BMP – you can try to rear porch of the Boarding House around 6:30 most evenings over the next week or so.
Comet Leonard swings around the Sun on January 3rd before heading back out the outer reaches of our solar system where it came from. Ken’s Unistellar eVscope is able to align itself and automatically capture and combine multiple exposures to produce a final image. The real beauty of the eVscope is that it can be quickly set up and producing great images in a few minutes. My setup with a small telescope and separate imaging camera and laptop requires a bit more work to set up and process images.
