O joy! Lovejoy!

Last night was finally a clear night. And I had to exploit it. I drove out of town and brought with me my two refractors. Wanted to use one as the guider for the other. When I arrived, I found that I was unable to reach focus with the guider camera... And I managed to fail the all star polar alignment several times. So in the end I had to settle for 1 minute exposure with the 71mm Zenithstar. One of the objects I tried my luck on, was comet Lovejoy. I missed it slightly (couldn't remember properly its coordinates. When checking the image afterwards, I see that this was a good thing, since I got a few other interesting objects in the same field of view. Down to the left, a weak red nebulosity can be seen. This is Simeis-22. And almost in the middle of the image, lower half, we can see NGC457, the Owl Cluster. And just up to the right from this, the small cluster NGC436. The tail of the comet didn't excactly show up well, but it is there up to the left on the comet. Click on the image for full size.

Tech spec : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, 10x1 minute unguided exposures, 24 flats, 71mm Zenithstar 5-element APO. Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.