COMET CAPTURED! (Updated)

Location:  Side yard, on driveway behind house, Little Lepreau, NB

Date Time:  January 16, 2018 1900-2200hrs

Weather:  No wind, bitterly cold, mostly clear, lots of frost on telescope, -11C showing on thermometer with no reported windchill.  Winter storm forecast for tomorrow.  Predicting 15 cm of snow. (Update:  I measured 17 cm of snow, in the backyard, whereas Ed, from Saint John, NB, took eight measurements and found an average of 18.5 cm of snow had fallen in Saint John.)

Attendance:  Myself.

Equipment:  Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO on Vixen mount with 19mm eyepiece.  Canon Rebel Xsi attached at prime focus with adapter.  Images processed on ArcsoftMediaimpressions.

Objective:  To view and image the south-eastern sky from Canis Major to Taurus.  Also, to continue looking for Comet C/2016 R2 Panstarrs, which is suppose to be NW of the head of Taurus.

Report:

• Objects imaged:  Rigel, Alnitak, Mintaka, M78, Aldebaran, Several images of sky NW of Taurus head, Sirius, M50, M47, M46 and M48.
• Ghostly, half-circles showed up in many images on this night, and in some of the images from two nights ago.  These may be a camera issue which produces image artifacts.
• Confirmed the Comet image from Jan 14.  The blueish smudge moved significantly since two nights ago.
• Always interesting to see how much reddish gas there is around Orion's Belt.  It seems to be just outside of our ability to see with unaided eye.  It doesn't take much of a time elapse image to draw this gas out in images.
• No shooting stars or satellites were seen.

Note: On this evening, at approximately 1910 hrs Atlantic Time, hundreds of people reported seeing a very bright meteor streak across the sky, above the Detroit, MI, USA area.  I was outside at the time, but looking South East.  Didn't noticed anything from the western direction.  At that time, though, my view of the Western Horizon was somewhat blocked.

Images:

Ghostly circles possibly do to camera artifacts.