April 3rd/4th 2013 when my girlfriend and I had an unforgettable night observing and photographing the spectacular conjunction of comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) over the famous volcanic rock formations at the Giant's Causeway from the Co. Antrim coast. This was taken with a 50mm F/1.8 lens, this lens was perfect because it is extremely fast and collects a lot of light which means much shorter exposures can be taken with less trailing, however the field of view is small so in order to get the comet and rocks sharing the same frame we had to back away and find a suitable location at the correct distance where the field could be filled with both subjects and we found that sweet spot on top of another rock formation. I did the camera work and my girlfriend used a torch to 'paint' the rocks so they would show up in the exposure, the result was this. We could see M31 and L4 easily with the naked eye from such a dark sky and the comet's fan-shaped dust tail could be seen like a ghostly curved delta form almost touching the outer halo of the galaxy, this was a night we will never forget, read the report for more information. * All images are available for sale in the form of photo prints, canvas or digital files for licensing, if you are interested in a purchase simply drop me an email. |