Lovejoy – one year after

Object Name C/2013 (Lovejoy)
Object Type Comet
Location Lindenau, Bavaria, Germany
Date December 2013
Media black graphite pencil on white paper, digitally inverted using the freeware software GIMP
Usually, weather in December is quite poor – at least in Germany. However, in 2013 we had cloudless skies for more than a week. So, before going to work, I was able to make sketches of the nice comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) using a pair of 16×70 binoculars.
In order to combine all sketches, I used the freeware program Cartes du Ciel to generate the starfield through which the comet wandered.
Since the comet came close to M13, I put the globular in also. The sketch I made of the cluster is some two years old, but I suppose it does not look a lot differently now 🙂
Observing conditions were not particularly good but also not very bad. Faintest star usually ranged from 6m0 to 6m2 except for December 16th and 17th when the moon was still above the horizon, brightening the sky quite badly. Therefore, the comet looked a lot less spectacular.

Best regards,
Christian Weis