Comet McNaught, January 12, 2007, 5:17 p.m., composite of four jpg images, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 camera, F/4.9, 25 mm focal length lens (5 mm aperture), 1/100 second exposures, just 3 degrees above horizon in San Diego, CA. The tail is visible in the image just after sunset. The comet was just barely visible to my naked eye, without binoculars, at about 2 p.m. in full sunlight in the afternoon.

Comet Holmes, November 10, 2007, 10 p.m., composite of 21jpg images, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 camera, F/4.9, 25 mm focal length lens (5 mm aperture), 15 second exposures with autodark subtraction, from San Diego, CA. Some obvious streaking is due to sidereal motion, even this close to the pole, so this is the longest exposure that was useful. The annotated picture shows that stars down to about magnitude 8.5 were just detectable with this very small lens and relatively noisy point-and-shoot camera. The comet was just visible to my naked eye at about magnitude 3, due to the bright sky conditions and light haze at my home.