Astrophotographer:

Conrad Jung

Transit of Mercury: This image was made from 13 separate images that were taken with my Canon 20D. The camera was fitted with a 2x teleconverter to get the image scale up. The telescope was a 4-inch f/6 refractor. With the teleconverter the system was 1200mm at f/12. The exposures were about 1/250 sec. The images were taken from Chabot.

Comet SWAN (1), taken with the Chabot Space & Science Center's 8-inch refractor, Leah, 16-minute composite exposure (16 x1 minute exposures), taken Oct. 25, 2006.

Comet SWAN (2), from Henry Coe State Park dark sky site, used 300 mm telephoto lens for 5 minute, 20 second total composite exposure (8 x 40 sec exposures) taken Oct. 26.

Just an additional side note. The comet was just visible to the naked-eye in the country but was a binocular/telescope object from the city. From the country the tail was a slender linear feature extending about 2-3 deg. or so. It's possible it was longer, but light pollution affected it's visiblility.