There was an opportunity on Friday to image the comet. Skies were clear with hazy areas especially near the horizon and some urban sky glow in the West at Cattle Point. The temperature was a chilly 6c. The south view contained numerous areas of interest, Orion, Hyades, Pleiades, Mars, Auriga and Gemini.

All I wanted was a snapshot of the comet next to the brilliantly red planet Mars so I only roughly polar aligned the Star Adventurer tracker and imaged with a 200mm lens. To simplify things I only captured a series of 30 second light frames without the usual calibration frames. Around 60 frames were captured between 7:58pm to 8:34pm but some were removed during processing. A star alignment was used so the comet is smeared but you can still see the fan like tail.

I hope the 14th is clear when the comet will pass by the Hyades and Aldebaran.

Camera: Nikon Z6II with FTZ adapter
Lens: Nikkor 70-200/4 at 200mm (image cropped)
Sensor ISO: 800
Exposure: 51 light frames used - f/5.6 for 30 seconds
Processing: Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop CC 2023