Comet Lovejoy 2013 R1 Shooting from the suburbs 14th of November 2013

Here are a couple of shots of the near naked eye (from my light drenched suburb anyways) Comet Lovejoy 2013/R1 which has been putting on a rather pleasing show for northern hemisphere folks as it passed the beehive cluster in Cancer and is slowly trekking its way across Leo. It showed Comet ISON up till yesterday when ISON had an upsurge in brightness. Both are about the same magnitude at the moment but Lovejoy is heaps easier to see as it is higher in the sky. Looks like we will be getting a decent show from ISON after all as ISON races towards perihelion on November 28. Lovejoy's rendezvous with the sun occurs on the 22nd of December. I had two comet viewing session, once visually on Sunday night (10th of Nov) with my Celestron/ Vixen C6 (will have to scan my sketch), and this imaging session. I waited for the comet to be high enough in the night sky (which mean staying up till 3am). Could not detect any hint of a tail but its nucleus was starlike with a nice big hazy coma. All shots taken with my Celestron NexStar 102GT and Meade DSI C equipped with a Orion 0.5x focal reducer and Orion SkyGlow broadband filter.

"Comet Lovejoy 2013/R1: Best balance of sharpness and brightness at 6x20 sec. All dark subtracted"