Comet C/2014E2 (Jacques)

It's exciting to have comets visit us, as they exhibit a range of qualities, defy prediction, and if nothing else, change position from night to night.

I've been able to photograph Comet Jacques twice this week using a telescope. These photos are with a 3-inch telescope at focal ratio 6.3:

Comet Jacques, 26 August 2014 (The image has been

cropped and the exposure level manipulated in Photoshop)

Comet Jacques, 26 August 2014 (Image cropped)

I can see this comet through a 9x50 finder scope, but not in my 7x50 binoculars. Two reasons may explain this: the finder scope isn't being held, so doesn't wiggle, and though both instruments have the same light gathering power, the higher magnification of the finderscope improves the contrast so that there is less glow from the background.

UPDATE: I got a little more quality time and space on Aug 29 to add this:

Same camera, same scope, but better sky.

In this animation, I spliced images taken from 9:40 to 10:20 pm:

jg