Comet Lovejoy, Mono and LRGB

[carastro]

I had another "go" at comet Lovejoy twp nights ago with the Atik314L as I wanted to get mpre tail from my LP location.  

This is a combination of 15 x 2mins and 5 x 5mins - total time 55mins, Skywatcher ED120

Guided on the comet, so almost an hour in total.

I then combined that image with my DSLR 450D from 15th to produce an LRGB which was 14 x 2mins.

Both images stacked manually in photoshop (as DSS works on stacking comets when it feels like it.

Carole 

[happy-kat]

I like the combined image with the green on the comet.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very  nice combination. I have yet to get my second chance at imaging Lovejoy. So far only 400 s of data

[kenny k]

Cracking captures Carole...very nicely done.

Kenny

[carastro]

Thanks every-one.

Carole 

[Davey-T]

Well done Carole, that tail is very elusive for me, caught a bit of it but may try my 314L on it.

Dave

[sharkmelley]

That's worked really well Carole.  The 314 has given it good tail definition.

Mark

[Trevor N]

Very good images Carole. I have had similar experiences with DSS. Trevor

[carastro]

Thanks every-one.

 I have had similar experiences with DSS. Trevor 

Glad it's not just me.

These were my problems.

I registered the comet in comet mode, but most of the time the "save" icon was greyed out, but I saved using the back up box.  Confirmed all were comet registered, but then the comet stacking box would not appear.  Eventually after re-registering the comet subs several times the comet stacking tab would show up, it would start to stack and then tell me only 1 frame would be stacked.  After faffing around with this loads of times I gave up and stacked manually in photoshop which was actually quite easy.

Any-one else had this experience?

Carole

[orion25]

Nice combo, Carole! Keep up the great work. I look forward to seeing more of your images 

[carastro]

Thanks Orion 

[Pete Presland]

very nicely done.

[carastro]

Thank you Pete and all the people who have "liked".

Carole 

[prokyon]

Very nice, great effort to do a comet LRGB! For comets I am always to lazy for that and so I use always my Canon.

[carastro]

Thanks Prokyon, but my RGB was done with the Canon DSLR and the luminance was done with my mono Atik, so it wasn't quite such an effort as you imagined.

Carole 

[matt-c]

That's a really nice image.

I'm also having abit of trouble with dss not feeling up to it, at the risk of sounding stupid how do you stack in PS?

[Chris]

Lovely green halo and tail on the combined image, I only managed a green dot so hats off to you

[carastro]

how do you stack in PS? 

Assuming you guided on the comet, you can just stack the images on top of each other.

I put 2 images A & B  together in layers and adjusted the opacity of the top layer top 50% and then flattened creating a new image AB

Did the same with D&E, F&G, H&I, J&K L&M etc

Then I combined AB with DE to create a further stack (A -E) ,  FG & HI (F -I) , JK & LM (J - M). 

Finally I stacked A - E on top of F - I and flattened and then J - M on top of that.  

So in this example 13 files into 1.  

Hope I explained it OK.

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Or you can just keep adding one image at a time on top of the previous stack adjusting the opacity of the upper layer to 50%.  

If you didn't guide on the comet this might not work, unless there is not much movement in the comet, then you might as well stack in the normal way.  

Carole 

[Komet]

Well done Carole.

I imaged Lovejoy a while ago through the totally inappropriate MN190. I got the coma and the start of the tail only. The tail has developed since and you have captured it nicely.

In Pixinsight there is a Comet Alignment module. That works very well on well tracked images.

[carastro]

Thanks Mick.

I am afraid I have never attempted Pixinsight, looks too unintuitive to me even after 4 demonstrations, and since I am well happy with Photoshop I can't see the point in trying to learn it.

Carole