NAMIBIA 2004

Observing 2 naked-eye comets

In order to observe the comets C/2004 T7 (LINEAR) and C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) we went to Namibia. All classical astronomy farms like Tivoli and Hakos were completely overbooked with amateurs. So we decided to tour Namibia and observe the comets. For the days when both comets were visible in the evening sky we stayed at the guest farm Matunda near Outjo.

I used a Mintron camera equipped with camera lenses (50mm f/1.7, 135mm f/2.5 Pentax, and 300mm f/4.5 Russian Maksutov-type telephoto lens). The signal was recorded with a Canon MV 600i. The digital video was grabbed with Supervison Cam through the firewire port, and the frames were stacked using Fitswork.

This equipment was quite suitable for use in the field, since the power consumption was minimal and a computer was not needed for recording the images.