Comet Garradd - Sept. 29, 2011

Comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) is a fairly bright and very well placed object for North American astronomers from now through Spring of 2012. As comets go it is a large object but never comes closer to the Sun than Mars' average distance. Thus it will be visible for an unusually long time but will never sport much of a tail. Below is an image of Garradd taken on the evening of September 29, 2011 from the Chiefland Astronomy Village in Chiefland, Florida. It is composed of multiple 2-minute exposures through LRGB filters.

(Click image to view larger version)

Here is also a very short video of the motion of Garradd over the 90-minute period that I spent imaging the object (10 frames, each frame approximately ten minutes apart).