The Old and The New

© Greg Gibbs. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my permission. All Rights Reserved.

This comet has continued to fade a lot over the last week or two, so unless I do another deep sky picture this will be my last upload from the great Comet Lovejoy appearance. I have been a bit hesitant to upload this shot. I'm not sure if the sign works in it or not, and the comet was too close to the horizon at the time of shooting to capture it all. I'm sure most of you would recognise this sign as the same one that featured in my first DD [link] . I thought I would see if I could capture the comet with it. Really tested the field of view limit on my Tamron 10-24mm Lens on this one. This covers over 90 degrees of the sky. The "lean" in the sign is caused by the wide angle lens distorting the angles. The green sky glow is caused by natural oxygen in the upper atmosphere. The orange glow below the sign is light pollution. The Large (upper) and Small (lower) Magellanic Clouds are irregular satellite gallaxies of our own Milky Way gallaxy and feature just to the left of the sign. I lit the sign during the long exposure with the light from my mobile phone.

Edit: After some concerns about the noise in the original photo I have reprocessed this image to hopefully make it cleaner.

More of my shots of Comet Lovejoy...