Over the years I have photographed many of the comets that have travelled through the inner solar system. The new comet – Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) had been hyped a lot in the media as “The Green Comet”. In my experience many of the comets I have seen have had a green colour – so that was nothing special.
Mars and the Comet – 11 February 2023
Most comets are visible close to either sunrise or sunset. This is when the comet is close to the sun and potentially the brightest intrinsically. This new comet would not be visible to observers in the southern hemisphere until early February, and would be at peak brightness to us at a time of full Moon. Not ideal. As well – a spell of cloudy weather did not help matters.
My first attempt to look for the comet was during the full Moon – and I could not even see it in photos.
February 10 was better. I could detect a green object in the camera. Here is the comet with Mars in the top left –
Here is a much tighter crop showing how faint the comet is –
I checked the position of the comet with Stellarium planetarium software after downloading the comet’s orbital data.
And on February 11, the comet was much closer to Mars. Here is a crop of the very first photo with Mars (lower left) and the faint green comet in the middle –
Typical settings – 3.2 seconds, f1.8, 800 ISO, 135 mm lens (cropped).
Hi David, we just found your websites and I have to tell you I am a huge fan! Wow – what a photographer and what cool experiences. What first brought us to your site was a posting about caving in a forum called Mod Wiggler. We only started caving later in life and I sure wish I had started alot sooner. But the main reason for my reaching out is to thank you – for your experiences, for your sharing and for your amazing photography. I also want to let you know that most of your photos on this new website and blog do not appear for us. I would love to see your photos (we do astrophotography as well).
Hello Zole – thanks for your comments. There is a problem with photos not loading with some browsers. I thought I had fixed it after altering settings on my website, but it seems not totally. Most visitors seem to see all the photos OK, but some visitors using the Chrome browser (and perhaps some others?) – have difficulties. All I can suggest is changing your browser settings – eg reducing the security settings, and clearing the cache. Or use another browser such as Firefox (or Safari if using a Mac).