That, and maybe a dose of city light pollution too, even though the color really wasn't quite right. I was too focused on the planetary alignment. Still I'm pretty pleased that the picture seemed to catch it. This is my first decent picture of Comet Hale-Bopp. I'll have to try again soon, as the comet now moves into the western sky.
Longer exposures show more trailing to the stars and comet.
Comet Hale-Bopp hasn't been kind enough to sit still at the celestial pole like Comet Hyakutake did. The skies there were much darker than the skies in Bowie, but you can still easily see the glow of Baltimore and its suburbs. I wanted to see what sort of scale I could get, and whether I could use short enough exposure times that tracking the Moon was unnecessary. The results are OK if you don't try looking for too much detail. I suspect the pictures are a little blurry because I simply messed up the focus, but it could be bad seeing, or the lack of tracking that made the pictures blur.