Comet Love Joy

Comet Love Joy came by in January 2015 in the middle of a cold spell here in Ontario, and if you don’t have the money for a fancy camera, scope as you wisely put all your money into an excellent mount. Well then you are off to the races when imaging in the middle of the winter at -36°C (which for our fellow Americans is -32.8°F)… aka dam cold.

At this temperature optics tend to be pretty tight and even a Skywatcher scope with a Lumix GH3 can start to complete against TAK scope and temperature regulated KAF8300 CCD chip camera. The performance difference between them is shockingly small…

Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you! So here is my fellow photographer, Eric Le May of DeepSpacePhotography.com, attempt with that vary equipment who was out with me that night.

https://www.deepspacephotography.com/?page_id=430&pid=286

Now you’ll notice the framing is quite similar, that was completely by accident or random luck, which ever you prefer. But the take away is that while in the Summer/Autumn/Spring Eric’s setup will beat mine hands down per minute of exposure… in the dead of winter, if you are willing to risk frostbite to a few appendages, you can get that premium imaging at a fraction of the cost.

Of course at the end of the day, I’d rather be imaging with the TAK…