Comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) is another beautiful comet that appeared (visually) in mid-2011. It passed by many deep space objects including M15 (Aug. 2), M71 (Aug 26-27), and 'the coathanger' cluster (Sept 2-3). I looked at the comet from a kid's birthday star party, then decided to try to image it from my light polluted front yard when I got home. The map shows the position of the comet on 9/3/11.

I got out to the desert to get away from city lights. The night was partly cloudy, but I hit a pretty good opening and captured about an hour of 45-second, unguided images. I used a 300mm f/4 lens with my Canon T2i.

The area/framing of the image is shown to the right.

Enchanted Skies - Astrophotography by Rich Richins (all images copyright, Rich Richins)