There was another "NASA Night" at Sky's the Limit, in Twentynine Palms. Numerous things going on in my life, so I could only afford the evening. Left for STL around 2pm, and got there around 5pm. Plenty of time to set up and be ready for dark.
The talk was scheduled for 5:30pm to 7:30pm, so we could show the waxing gibbous moon before the talk, then, I hoped, show Comet Lemmon after the talk.
As it turned out, from where my telescope was set up, I lost Comet Lemmon behind a structure pretty early after 7:30pm. My photographing rig, which I set up south of the telescope pad, had a slightly longer view. Took about a dozen shots before it dipped below the horizon, so at least I could show visitors that, if they arrived after the direct view was lost.
Lemmon is still a very photogenic comet, and not a bad telescopic view, even with the large moon on Saturday.
My photo setup is an 80mm f/70 refractor, with a focal reducer, yielding a focal length of 448mm, and a focal ratio of f/5.6. Exposure of the top show was 30 seconds and ISO 1000; second shot was 20 seconds at ISO 1600. Nikon D780, downloaded to my phone at 2mp size, cropped to reduce visible vignetting.
Comet Lemmon is slowly moving south and west, so it's setting earlier and is lower in the sky at any given evening hour as seen in the northern hemisphere. Should still be viewable next weekend, as it gets to perihelion (closest to the sun), but farther from earth. The weekend after that will be more iffy, as it gets both dimmer, farther from us, and lower and further south. After that, you'd have to be viewing further south, say around 20-degrees north latitude, to have a shot at it, for another week. Then, it's gone for another 1100 years or so.
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