Portent of horrible Doom!

Nikon D100, 70-250mm

There's a comet out right now. We could see it pretty well with binoculars last night, so I thought I'd try taking a picture of it - my first star image! Well, that was a dumb idea.

This was probably a 15 second exposure, but even that's enough for the stars (actually, the earth) to move quite a bit; and yet it's not quite enough to get any detail in the comet itself (the fuzzy thing in the top half of the image). On top of that, the lens (the biggest I have) isn't really long enough, so the comet ends up too small; so even though it would still be blurred by the motion of the earth if I had a bigger lens, you can't see any detail - this is a crop from a much larger image.

Alas.

And, here's a 20 second exposure of the Pleiades. Note how much they move in just 20 seconds.


Maybe I should get a bigger lens, or a telescope, before i try anymore star shots.