COMET C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS

Location:  Prince of Wales, NB, Canada

Date Time:  July 26, 2022 2210-0018 hrs

Weather:  No wind, partly cloudy, hazy to mostly clear, some ground fog, lots of dew and bugs, 17C and 61% humidity.  Waning Crescent Moon at 3% Illumination.

Equipment:  Telescope 80 ED/APO with 2" 32mm eyepiece, Canon Rebel T3 attached at prime focus.  Photos processed with Photo Shop.

Objective:  To capture an image of comets that were in the late evening sky.  Comets C/2017 K2 Panstarrs in Ophiuchus, Comet C/2020 K2 Panstarrs in Ursa Major and Comet 73P in Virgo.

Report:

• Imaged the sky where 8.5 mag Comet C/2020 K2(mag 8.5) was supposed to be, which was very low in the west during observing, in Virgo.  Comet did not show up in the very distorted image.  Image was distorted by haze/humidity close to horizon.
• While in the neighborhood of Virgo, imaged an area of sky which has the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.  Picked up a number of galaxies in one field of view, but they were too faint to make much of a single shot image.  Must return here in the future to take many images to really bring out these fainter galaxies.
• Found Comet C/.2017 K2(mag 8.4) high in the South West in Ophiuchus.  It showed up brightly in the image view screen, so I tried to view it visually with the small telescope and a 32 mm eyepiece.  Surprisingly it showed up as a small gray fuzzball with a possible fan shape tail, when viewed with averted vision.

Single shot, 30 second, ISO 3200.  Uncropped processed.

• Tried imaging Comet 73P(mag 10.4), which was supposed to be high, to the west of Polaris in Ursa Major, but it didn't show up in images.
• Viewed Jupiter and four of its moons spaced two on one side, and two on another.  Jupiter rose, just above the eastern horizon around midnight.  Very bright!
• Seen no shooting stars and several satellites, including one iridium flare.  Many airplanes were seen.