How to Take Great Comet Photos:

Great comet photos can be taken with relatively simple equipment: A 35mm adjustable camera, tripod, a cable release and a flashlight.

Find a good dark location (away from city lights) and one that has something of interest in the foreground that you can include in the picture.Set the camera on the tripod with lens wide open (about f/2.4) and using the cable release trip the shutter for 15 seconds. Since the earth rotates pretty fast at 1000mph (25,000miles/24hours) exposures longer than 15 seconds using a 50 mm lens will show star streaks on the film.

Exceptions are objects in the north sky like comet Hale-Bopp (that is in the NorthWest) can be exposed for about 30 seconds without showing stars as streaks. During the 15 second exposure use the flashlight to light up the foreground objects for 2-5 seconds to obtain dramatic comet and foreground shots. This technique has enabled people with very modest equipment to get coveted comet shots that have been witnessed in newspapers and on TV stations across the nation.

Equipment Used:

All 50mm shots taken with regular Minolta 35mm camera on tripod for 30 second exposures at f/2.4 . All 135 mm shots taken with Contac 35mm camera mounted "piggyback" on top of a 36 year old 2.4 inch Tasco telescope purchased by the author with paper route money when he was 12.

Cross hairs were placed on the eyepiece and the telescope was used "like sights on a gun" to point the camera at the comet and keep it in center view while tracking the comet with manual hand controls for the time exposure of about 5 minutes. The process is tedious but is the only way to take long exposures over 30 seconds without more sophisticated clock drive equipment that many modern astrophotographers use.

About the author:

Wally Pacholka, lives in Long Beach with his wife Elaine and two children Matthew and Jennfer. He has had a great love of God's creation since first opening his first science book in 5th grade. His great passion is observing and now photographing comets. He got into photography to be able to show others back home some of the great wonders of God's creation that he was seeing during his observations in the California desert.

Comets - What are they:

Comets (as all created things) are a special creation of God designed specifically to demonstrate His power and glory. They are very small astronomical objects usually from 1 mile to 25 miles (Hale-Bopp is 25 miles in diameter) in diameter, yet they display a tail or tails that are well over 10s of millions of miles long. Normally at their size (25 miles) and distance (122 million miles for Hale-Bopp) it is a wonder that we can even see them at all. It is fitting that the creator would delight us with these magnificent objects from time to time to remind us of His glory and desire to make Himself known.

All text and images © Wally Pacholka, 1997 Last Updated: 4/16/97

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