Apparently it's the first time a comet has been discovered by astrophotography. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17872359/ read down, he used a 350D plus some kind of xx-200/2.8 lens
I saw that story a while ago, because I regularly read a "space weather" web page that covers events like this, especially when there's no significant solar activity to steal the spotlight. I didn't realize it was the first time it had been done with a DSLR though. It's funny how easily comets can be discovered now-a-days. There's a satellite (perhaps more accurately termed a space probe, it's a long ways away from earth, at Lagrange point L1, which is between the Earth and the sun, about four times farther than the moon) called SOHO that monitors the sun, it's also able to see planets that come close to its field of view of the sun, as well as comets. People can discover comets just by watching the web page that displays the images coming back from SOHO and picking out unidentified comets. I can't find the number of comets discovered that way now, but I believe it's in the hundreds. Full credit to this guy though. He estimated he spent a thousand hours on the comet hunt. It sort of warms my heart to see such classical methodology (brute force photographic search is the method that was used to find Pluto) still being used when it's possible to find comets on a web page.
