Pan-Starrs first capture..

Here it is...the second week of spring and not a lick of severe weather anywhere in sight of Oklahoma.  Its hard to imagine when I wasn't suffering such a bad drought of SDS as I am right now.  But wait, wasn't there something special planned months ago that I had my sights set on? That wasn't about surrounding weather?

March welcomed in a new kid to the game and it wasn't anywhere on this world, but above.  Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) is a non-periodic comet discovered back in June 2011 that would soon become visible to the naked eye when it was near perihelion the second week of March.  This comet would mark the first of two visible comets in the northern hemisphere and I have to say, I couldn't wait to see it.  You see, I'm a big fan of astronomy, ever since I was a kid.  I took in my first full solar eclipse back in 1979 at the ripe old age of 11 from the playground of my elementary school and found it fascinating. Over the years, I've grown to follow much of what the cosmos has to offer and recently in the last decade started to record the sights.  But enough of that, lets get onto the pics.

In my first outing out to see the comet, was on Thursday March 7th, when it was suppose to come into view on the western horizon.  I followed the star maps of the program I use, (Starry Nights 6th edition) and it looked to be a great view.  However I was disappointed to see that the comet was much lower in the sky, thus leaving me unable to see it.  For the next several days, the skies were overcast which left me to only sit and wait for the next big break.

MARCH 12th 2013.

The skies finally gave way to a chance once more to see the comet.  The crescent moon played a part to guiding me to the comet which later I found out to be much lower in the sky than originally thought.  Heres what starry night shown:

      
In fact, this image above is not at all what I saw in the same time frame.  This is what I truly saw.

I never could find the moon, let alone the comet for at least another 40 minutes.  It took a while for the moon to become visible, and when it did, it lead me directly to the comet which was surprising smaller than i expected.

With the comet captured by my long exposures and set of binoculars, it was just a matter of time to begin getting better shots of the comet seen below.

And this one....

and finally this one with enhanced contrast ...

All in all, I was able to capture a fair amount of shots, but only came out with a handful due to the cold air which was about 29 degrees.  The next couple of nights would be warmer, so we'll see what comes next.