Photo of the Week for April 17, 2015
Comet Lovejoy’s path across the sky has taken it past many deep-sky objects — some famous (such as the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy), and some obscure. As this photo by Ontario astrophotographer Klaus Brasch illustrates, the comet visited numerous clusters and nebulas as it drifted through the constellation Cassiopeia in mid-March. The most prominent objects in this image are the nebulas IC1848 and IC1805 (upper left — also known as the Heart and Soul Nebula); the Double Cluster (lower left); and NGC457, just to the right of the comet.
This composite image consists of four 3-minute exposures that Brasch recorded at his retirement home in Arizona with his Canon 6D DSLR camera fitted with a 135mm f/4 lens and a Hutech IDAS LPS-V4 narrowband nebula filter.
