Comet C2001-Q4 NEAT, Venus

Object: C2001-Q4NEAT

Type: Comet

Constellation: Cancer

Date: 19 May 2004
Equipment: Casio digital camera, 25mm eyepiece afocal, Vixen 114mm f5.3 ED refractor

Subframes: 8 x 60 second, unguided, no darks or flats.

This little blue fuzzball was an early evening binocular object low in the western sky for a few days in the summer of '04. The above image is horribly vignetted and a bit noisy but nonetheless doesn't do too bad a job at portraying the comet's telescopic appearance. More talented imagers than I produced some wonderful images showing all sorts of long tails, but I'm just "glad I was there"...

A 12% phase Venus was also brilliantly on show lower on the horizon, so I rattled off forty or so 0.1 second frames and Registaxed them. I quite like the enigmatic feel of the result...