P17 Holmes comet

RASC Winnipeg's own Gerry Smerchanski, got a little prize this morning for his sketch of this most unusual comet, P17 Holmes. He's taken the leap to digital sketching to more closely reproduce what the digital cameras seem to struggle to capture accurately. There is a long and rich tradition of pencil sketching at the eyepiece and this seems to be one of the few subjects where a digital sketch has been a better tool than a pencil.

Astronomy Sketch of the Day for October 29th 2007.

These images give a very good idea of what it was like to look through a telescope at this comet.