I could have really used a clock drive for this comet.
Even a 4 second exposure showed noticeable motion blur.
I actually have a battery-powered equatorial mount that I cobbled together many years ago, but it would probably take longer to align it than the time I had…
We’re overdue for a Great Comet. Being the greedy amateur astronomer that I am, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be the year that sees two of them!
Hey Beowulff.
A couple of tricks. Set your camera up so that the mirror locks up before the exposure begins. That allows vibrations to die down. Or you can do the hat trick too for the mirror or if the mirror is up after you press the exposure button. The mirror slap probably causes larger vibrations that take long to die down than button pressing. Or set a delay for exposure to begin X seconds after button pressing. Remotes are very helpful in this regard.
Anyways, the old hat trick is to press the button, while holding an object (large black hats are the best 
but black t shirts, painted pieces of cardboard, dead black cats will work in a pinch ) in front of the lens. Allow 5 seconds give or take before you remove the “hat”. This allows the camera to quite vibrating, which is important for anything longer than about 1/60 second exposure. Be careful not to bump camera with said “hat” while holding it in front of camera or moving it away. Now obviously, if you hold the hat for 5 seconds into a 10 second camera exposure, in reality it is a 5 second exposure.
As for the star motion, the old 35 mm film rule of thumb was a 30 second exposure max for a 50 mm lens, 15 for a 100mm lens, 7.5 for 200 and so on. Now, if your sensor is not full sized, but say half sized, you need to half those numbers. If you want to be conservative, might want to half or even fourth yet again.
You need to look carefully at your photos from the previous nights. If you can find some STARS in the pics you should be able to “stack” your photos. I suspect you need 3 stars visible in the frame to do that. So, what you do is take a bunch of really short exposures using the guidelines above then you add them together later using some photosoftware. That also allows you to weed out some that may be bad because the camera moved due to wind, vibrations, you bumping the tripod ect.
Now, I haven’t tried to do that in years, so I don’t even know what the latest software can do or even if any decent stuff is available for free. But I plan to take a bunch of pics of various exposure times, focal lengths, and F stops during the evening. But I am also going to try the large number of very short exposures and figure out the stacking problem later. I can take the pics now and try to use them later.
Hope that helps.
Oh, Beowulff. Even the crudest eyeball polar alignment is going to to reduce the blurr on you photos by a factor of 10 I’d guess.
As long as your switch isn’t set for the wrong hemisphere it will be a vast improvment (ask me why some of my Hale Bopp pictures are so damn streaky).
Here are my contributions, from San Luis Obispo, looking out over the ocean.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26870187@N02/sets/72157632990435630/
Very nice.
Silky-smooth - what camera / ISO were you using?
Panasonic GH3, so no mirror to lock up, but I did use the shutter delay that closes the apeture down, then pauses, then shoots. ISO 400, 4 sec. I went back up tonight with my telescoope, but the clouds were against me.
Durn it.
Saw it easily 2 nights ago even with just my eyes. Last night I was all loaded for bear and had spent a fair number of hours figuring out how to use a borrowed camera. All the settings! And even the lenses have switches on them! What happened to Fstop, shutter speed, and manual focus
Anyhow, the sky LOOKED clearer last night than it did 2 nights ago. But I live in the deep south and sometimes a faint haze can really suck the light out something close to the horizon.
Couldn’t even see the comet with binocs or a small scope even though I knew exactly where to look (and did a lot of scanning as well).
I guess the upside was a bunch of college/mid 20’s whippersnappers were there trying as well. I had brought a 6 inch dob and things higher in the sky were pretty good. So, they all got a nice view of the moon, Jupiter, the Orion nebula, the Plieades, and a few star cluster here and there. Spent about 1.5 hours showing them stuff and enjoying their company. Fun, smart, positive “kids” who were quite appreciative.
So, we all still had a good time.
Pretty much my experience last night as well, sans the company. Tues I thought I brought everything, but actually I forgot my scope’s mount, so I loaned my wide field piece to another guy who was up on the hill with a cheap spotting scope, making their night, and concentrated on my camera. Last night I had everything, got there early enough to set it all up, couldn’t find it until it was settling into the haze, and spent more time veiwing Orion and Jupiter. Ah well, still time well spent!
Very pretty! Wow!
It’s pouring rain here. 
No comet for me.
And more pretty! I love the southwestern look with the cactus.
Cloudy again tonight in North Little Rock.
Very nice photos, beowulff and outlierrn.
I got a pretty good look tonight with my binoculars. I live just outside Albuquerque. We’re at 5000 ft. elevation and the sky was clear tonight. Very cool.