Comet LINEAR S4, the comet of the summer of 2000. Discovered almost a year before its brightest apparition by the computerized LINEAR search program, the comet was not as bright (6m) as originally expected and was not seen with the naked eye.
This photograph is the only good photo in a series of 16. It was made on my balcony at the prime focus of my roughly polar aligned Vixen R-114S Newtonian. Since everything on that balcony moves when somebody only breathes, the stars became elongated streaks and points, as did the comet.
The image is digitally processed quite a bit, increasing contrast and brightness, as well as changing the background color. The above image is an approximately 30%-crop of the original image.
A sketch of the comet one day earlier, on 21-July 2000. As you can see, the comet moved rather rapidly in just one hour. Its position around this time was approximately 8h59m RA, 60.5 degrees Declination.
