Fred Garcia, my brother from another mother, told me about Comet 2022 E3 ZTF a couple of days ago. It was cloudy that night; so, I didn’t do anything more than look up its orbital elements and ephemerides. Last night, the sky was clear, and I decided to attempt to view/photograph it.
You likely know that I live near downtown Austin, Texas. As in most metropolitan centers, the sky is barely visible because of light pollution. I know that lovers of metropolitan skylines think that those views are the loveliest, but you are seriously out of tune with nature if you believe that. So, looking for comets from my perch in Austin is a challenge.
This comet, like many before it, has been billed as the comet of a lifetime. Who knows? Perhaps it is. I’ll tell you that I photographed it in the wee hours this morning – around 6:00 AM. The sky had a lot of Cirrus clouds. I decided to use ultra-short exposures and a high ISO in hopes of recording the comet despite the clouds.
Below are widefield and cropped images of Comet 2022 E3 ZTF. These images comprise 36, 10-second frames taken through the 130mm APO astrograph with a light pollution filter – all stacked together. The comet appears as a fuzzball near the center of the frame. It has a tail, but that feature is not obvious in these renderings. Alas!
