Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) on Christmas night in Australia. Kids gets presents in the morning and this grownup got one in the evening — a gift as simple as a clear sky for an hour or so.
The comet was probably magnitude 5 (excluding the aggregated light in the tail). It was
not visible to the naked eye because of its low altitude and city glow; almost certainly my night vision was shot by lights in the neighbourhood. It was easy to find and a hint of a tail was visible in 10x60 binoculars.
Background galaxies dimmer than magnitude 17 visible in the frame (such as PGC668460 at 17.80), and of course many brighter. This points to to sensitivity of the camera
ASI294MM Pro and the speed of the 8" RASA F/2 (plus under sampling with 2x2 binning).
The image is actually cropped due to messing up the calibration — accidentally omitting a T2 shim whilst unscrewing the camera between filters and flats (I don't have a filter drawer). This affected color data that was also captured. It should be recoverable (but I fear too many hours in PixInsight). I like the B&W version in any case and it was easy to process — sometimes simplest is best.
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