Catching the Green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

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I had been hoping to photograph the new comet all month, but the January weather had not been very accommodating. I was able to get a few glimpses at the object on January 20/21, which got me even more  excited about the object and off course there was some hype about the "green comet" in the media. 

Finally on January 29th we had one (single) night of (reasonably) clear weather and after battling through some technical issues getting the comet properly framed and tracked I was able to shoot a number of frames. This first image contains the data from all the reasonably goof frames I was able to take that night.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) on January 29th
approx 400x30sec on C9 Hyperstar

The other thing I noticed, when blinking through the individual frames one could see quite some movement in the comet's tail during the night.

Evolution of comet's tail throughout the night of Jan29

This image shows this rapid development of the comet's tail.  At the beginning the tail was "fizzling" a bit to the right, later to the left, while at the end it became concentrated and thin.

I noticed that kind of comparably fast changes in the comets's appearance already earlier in the month, when I was only able to catch comparably short glimpses. Here is a comparison from the nights of Jan20 and 21:


I have to say it was worth the patience, the "green comet" really didn't disappoint.


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