Comet Lovejoy Fail

Here at Bedlam Central, failure isn't a remote cousin that drops in every so often to stir up The Normal.  Failure seems to be a constant bedfellow that greets me in the morning and tucks me in at night.  OK, it's not quite that bad, but it feels like it sometimes.  

One of the latest but by no means the only recent manifestation of that is Comet Lovejoy which slowly floated across the Northern Hemisphere's sky during the month of January.  In the next few days I will post a recent attempt to capture Lovejoy out in the Florida hinterlands, but before that, I tried right here.  

I needed first to eliminate all the light pollution around here.  I decided to try some shots in the racquetball courts which is a very short walk from my front door.  If I was going to film a horror movie at Bedlam, I'd have to have a scene in the courts.  Half covered-half open to the elements, no lighting and cold, dank and uninviting, these courts are never used for racquetball anymore.  In fact, Norah, Bry and I go in to serve some soft lobs of the tennis ball.  Every so often we find strange things in here, too.   Like the time we discovered, in the corner, three votive candles and some wrapping of some sort.  On the 18th I will post one of our most recent discoveries in this place.  

I gathered my camera, tripod, 300mm lens and plenty of resolve and wandered over to the place around 10:30 p.m. one night.  I slowly opened the heavy steel door and listened for any movement.  I entered and found a spot close to the wall (always watch your flank) while my eyes adjusted to the darkness.  

The orange streaks in these pictures are girders that form X's in the open ceiling half of the courts.  There are three courts all together, two are open and a third has been closed and locked.  

In the lower photo you can see Pleides in the bottom half.  Supposedly Lovejoy was to the right of that area of the sky.  Whether or not Lovejoy is there will have to remain a mystery.  The failure of these pictures are mostly due to pilot error.  Maybe a different lens might have been better, but then again, perhaps I didn't have the equipment necessary to capture Lovejoy in the first place.  It was an admittedly small comet and not easily seen by binoculars.  And then the proliferation of nighttime light might have made my efforts futile to begin with.  

But I consider EIB a customer-friendly blog so I will post a couple Lovejoy photos taken by other people.  People who enjoy darker night sky, have better equipment and expertise than I have.  

There will be other comets, hopefully, and perhaps darker skies before I cash in my chips.  But Lovejoy, I might very well miss when it flies back again in 10,015.