First go at comet swan

The weather in the UK at late october is usually rain and cloud and that has kept me from seeing this comet up till now.However after praying to the rain gods a one hour window appeared.I decided to use the LX200 as I had got it into my head that it would be small and dim so I set everything up accordingly.After setting up the camera I pointed the scope in the approximate direction and let off a short exposure with the LX at F10.Lack of preparation proved me wrong.The comet was bright , big and going across the sky like a freight train light.Wrong telescope for best picture and no time to reset everything up.The first shot is below and is a good picture of a jumbo jet at 35,000 feet with the comet behind which is one of the problems with my site being under several main air lanes.However after a few curses I set the lx200 up for f6.3, refocussed the camera and tried again.These were two minute exposures and you can see the star trail of the comet movement in that time.As I was running out of sky I took a quick shot of M27 to use as an optical standard candle.The weather is now back in with a vengeance so I think I will be lucky to get another go using a telescope of shorter focal length.

The comet head was about the size of M27 and is listed as magnitude 8.1 so the comet was much brighter than that.

Another partially clear night two days later but with a lot of water in the atmosphere which reflects back a lot of light pollution.Without this the tail would have been more visible.

using m27 as a comparator again the main outer envelope shows only slightly brighter.