Comet 2012 F6 Lemmon. 5 June, 2013.
Combination of 30, 60 second exposures. Canon Digital Rebel DSLR.
135mm F/2.8 Olympus lens.
Comet 2012 F6 Lemmon has been a beautiful, naked-eye comet that peaked at around magnitude 5 and displayed a nice large coma and tail. The best views of the comet were from the southern hemisphere, with northern observers not really getting a good view until it appeared in the morning sky in late May. By this time it had dropped below naked-eye visibility, but was still a nice sight.
In the image above, the broard dust tail is pointing downward while the fainter ion tail is pointing to the right towards the glow from a bright star just out of the field.
An example of how sometimes things do not go quite according to plan!! On June 10, the comet was drifting past M 31, close enough for the two to fit in the same field of the 135mm lens. Unfortunately, once I had a look at the photos the next day, I saw that the comet was right on the edge of the frame! :-(((
