1986 Halley's Comet visit to the Sonoran Desert captured on film.
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For most photographers and scientists, capturing a glimpse of something as elusive as a comet is worth spending a lifetime to achieve. Although Halley's has been captured many times in photographs, these shots have primarily been taken from large earthbound telescopes, instruments that reveal amazing detail but don't give the viewer the sense of witnessing the event from earth. In 1986 astrophotography had become available to the amateur photographer by way of the new high-speed color print film Kodacolor 1000 ASA. This film, along with a superb F1.7 50 mm lens and a 30-second exposure during a moonless, high-desert nighttime sky produced the photograph you see today. Back in 1986 when the Halley rage was on, pictures of the comet were seen in almost every publication in existence. Having successfully produced my Halley photo (which required 150 attempts), I was elated when astronomer Dr. Susan Wykoff of Kitt Peak Observatory, head of Halley Watch International, contacted me saying that my earth-perspective photograph was the best photo of the comet she had ever seen and requesting the purchase of multiple copies of the print. Many images you see of Halley's Comet are modified or even composites. This photograph has not been altered in any way.
Want to read the whole story? Its a good one! Download the Word doc A Shot in the Dark written by William Northey, author of The Grand Trine available at Amazon.com
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For centuries Halley's Comet has remained one of the key celestial time clocks, reappearing approximately every 76 years, or once in a human life. This marker has been associated with everything from the star of Bethlehem to the Norman Conquest. Mark Twain was born during one return of Halley's and died during the next. Writers, poets and musicians have immortalized the comet in novels, poems and songs, for example Mary Chapin Carpenter's delightful tune, "Halley came to Jackson." "Dr Wallis is dead - Mr Halley expects his place - who now talks, swears and drinks brandy like a sea captain."
-John Flamsteed,
A bitter contemporary of Sir Edmund Halley