Well I guess I'll try again. This is 12P Pons-Brooks 2023. Just a snapshot taken with a Canon Ra and Canon 70-200L lens. These lenses are terrible for astro. I shot this around 170mm to get Andromeda, but the stars are really wonky in the corners. Not much done other than cropping.
Hi Terri!
Glad you caught it! It's being a very challenging object for me, and that's the fun of it. Not willing to post anything yet, but may be getting close. It's being pretty spectacular from my place, until it goes into the trees.
-P-
It was exceptionally challenging for me on many fronts. From my house the western sky is very light polluted.. that along with the fact that I have no feeling for astro imaging with my SLR. I am going to try tonight with an astro camera for which I have a better feeling for the settings. It could be just as challenging. I tried the camera and lens because of the tail, but I hardly got any of it I imagine because my exposure too low or too much pollution. I'll find out if I can do better tonight. The window for me is a little over 45 minutes and that's it.
Terri
Here is another try. This is 12p/Pons-Brooks23 taken on 3/12. It was a beautiful night but still lots of light dome over Burlington. I shot this with an Astro-Physics Stowaway on an Astro-Physics Mach2 mount. I used a ASI2600MC OSC camera without guiding. I took 90 second exposures over almost 2 hours with an altitude of 21 degrees down to about 8 degrees. This is using most of the images except for the last few which ended up in trees. It was tricky setting up the mount to get the longest integration. The comet doesn't move that much versus the stars, but does move so needed to process in comet format. It does have a lot of noise which is a bugger to get rid of in the tail without killing the tail. The background is very dark due to noise there as well. Better than my first try though I think.
@terri Fantastic image, Terri!! Love the tail in the image. Great job of capturing this.
Greg
Yet another version here with a bit brighter background without letting noise come though.
@terri Both are great, Terri!! I'd say, "Challenge Met!" -- and then some. Great job.
Greg
