Trying to see the "Comet of the century"

reaching your goal is not always needed

Our little family has missed seeing the Northern Light twice this year. I’m still holding out hope for later on this fall/winter that there will be more solar flares and we get a chance to see them even if we have to drive a couple of hours north. I had seen the news of the Comet of the century coming around and wanted to show David. I have really fond childhood memories of my Dad showing us lunar eclipses and Haley’s Comet.

So I packed up my big camera and the tripod, and he packed up his binoculars and we rode our bikes to the bridge over the nearby park to watch the sunset and look out for the comet. There were lots of trails from airplanes as we are near Schiphol airport (one of the busiest in all of Europe). But there was one trail that seemed to be larger and slower than all the rest and it was heading down, not away up up and away. We were certain we had captured it.

Totally thought the bright line in the left third of the photograph was the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet

Zoomed in shot of what I thought was The Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet

But looking further at photographs in other news publications, maybe not. I am definitely not an astronomer. The thing about science though is that you learn from from your mistakes and assumptions and other’s corrections and input. You should always be willing to try again if you don’t reach your goal.

Not all was lost however. My son and I had a fun evening out and we got to play with the camera and the tripod and got some cool photographs out of it. We were definitely playing with “capturing light”. :) I got to teach him a bit how cameras work - long shutter speeds do interesting things with moving objects. Tripods are important for long exposures to keep things steady, and there is the added trick of using a timer so you don’t shake everything by pressing the shutter. On the bike ride home he said he wanted to save up and buy a used camera which made my photographer heart swell just a tad. It’s the best when you can share interests and if they pick em up, awesome. If not, they get cool exposure into different ways of experiencing the world.

Moon with an airplane off to the side - the niceness of having a 200mm lens

Playing with long shutter speeds, and setting a timer on the tripod so the camera is perfectly still to get a crisp shot.