This one always makes me smile - Comet Bradfield, April 27th 2004, 3:40am
Lots of good memories are attached to this photo. I'd been out with my telescope since dusk the night before and had an absolutely glorious time flitting around the night sky like a butterfly in a garden.
The comet's tail was as long as 24 Full Moons placed side by side. The Andromeda Galaxy is in there, too. It's a small diffuse smudge located about 1/5th of the way in from the left edge of the photo, and down just a bit from the top.
The man who discovered this lovely, graceful comet was William A. Bradfield (1927-2014). In total he discovered 18 comets, sadly this was his last. He discovered this one about a month before I took the picture... he was almost 77 years young at the time.
(Image info: Olympus OM-1n; 50mm lens @ 1.8; 400 ISO Fuji Superia X-TRA film; 12 second exposure.)
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