The mounting turns out to be the important thing

[fivemack]

With a clever bit of mechanism to keep it pointed in the right direction, you can get quite reasonable pictures of the stars with a moderately fancy camera and lens from a desolate fen a mile outside Horningsea:

Comments

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

These are all 60-second exposures at ISO 800 f/2.8, with the levels shifted in Photoshop to make empty sky black rather than orange. The top two are cropped, the third is a full frame at 70mm. The green blob in the middle of the second image is Comet Lovejoy.

I tried some more pictures last night, but was plagued with self-loosening screws.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

This confirms for me that Comet Lovejoy is not nearly the noteworthy object that some news reports describe it.