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Congrats Adam on a great image! 👍 And just like you say, nice to see somewhere close to home get a nod amongst all the global images 😀

All the best to you and the Mrs @vlaiv. Hope you are both back fighting fit soon 💪

Thanks Chilli Thanks Sunshine. I only ever use ISO 200 on the D5300.

Last Saturday night (Jul 18) i made a trip out to a local dark sky site. I had the pleasure of having the company of Adam @tooth_dr who lives nearby, who very kindly agreed to join me and show me the way around (big thanks again Adam!). It was a great night. I got to see the comet naked eye, and the length of the tail was truly amazing to behold, once i managed to get away from the laptop screen and finally get some dark adaptation! Conditions started out great, then started to deteriorate when a heavy mist came in from nowhere. Because i was using the mount, my setup time wasn't the best, so by the time i actually started capturing, the best of the conditions had already passed. I then noticed that the scope had also already started to dew up. With no portable psu for dew control, i had no option but to just keep capturing and hope for the best. In total i captured 66 subs of 30s. Some were very dubious, to say the least. I tried doing several Comet-Only stacks in DSS. Best 8, 16, 25, 49, 60, 66. Apart from the obvious decrease in noise as the stack no. went up, i was surprised just how little difference there was between them all. The dust tail looked no different at all , and the Ion Tail looked better as the sub no. went up. I can only assume that the dewing up of the scope had acted as a collar on the quality of all the subs. So in the end i only ditched the worst 6, and just went with the remaining 60. HEQ5-Pro, D5300, 60 x 30s (30 mins), no filter, no guiding. ISO 200. Subs calibrated in APP. Comet and Stars stacked separately in DSS. Gradient Reduction and star colour calibration done in APP. Then everything combined in PS. Considering everything, i'm 'content' with how it came out in the end. I'll just have to wonder how much better it could have been if i had a means of dew control and the mist hadn't come along when it did. The 80ED also was never the right tool for the job, but it was the best one i had available. Note to self - time to get a proper lens for AP! 😄

It's not hard at all. Create a new layer and do a Selective Colour adjustment. Target the Blues only, then increase the Cyan and Magenta sliders, while decreasing the Yellow slider. You may have to do it more than once. Then just use a layer mask so that it only applies it to the Ion tail and nowhere else.

Nice one Adam! Were you able to sort out the stacking in the end? Did you do a split approach of comet + stars? How many subs made it into this image? The sky background colour looks fine to me. The artefact running across the screen is a strange one alright. One possible solution might be to run starnet+ to get a starless version. Then susbtract it from the full version to get just the stars. Then go back to the starless version and use the clone stamp tool to fix the artefact. Then finally add the stars to this in blend mode lighten. ps - Loving the wee galaxy photo-bombing the image on the LHS btw! Crazy to think the difference in distance between the comet and the galaxy!

Yes it was a great night, totally worth the drive out 😀 I'm still working my way through the data, hoping to have an image soon (although it's proving tricky as the conditions weren't great by the time i finally got collecting data). It was nice to see the comet with the naked eye (i would never have been able to do so from home, too much LP) and it's always nice to have some company too in this all-too-often-lonesome hobby of ours! lol. Thanks again for the meet up Adam, and showing me around the location 👍

🤣 Please tell me it was only this 1 sub Adam 😳 At least I managed to intersect the comet nicely 😋

No probs Michael. I was suggesting it for @vpsj

If you have Photoshop and are up for doing it manually, then you can actually stack in PS. It won't be as good as using DSS or the like, but it might get you out of a jam. Have a look at this video, it shows very well what you need to do:

Thanks Ken, much appreciated.

Love this one Ken. It really gives the impression of the comet zipping through space. May I ask, were you just hedging your bets by doing various exposures from 5s to 30s? Did they actually prove useful in the final image, or would the 30s subs have just done on their own? Just thinking, did you use the shorter ones for the comet's core?

It's still a while off yet, so could all change, but the forecast for Sunday is looking promising Adam. If it holds up, I might take a run up to Beaghmore to get away from the LP. It's only a 70 min drive from home, which isn't too bad. I might ask you for some advice on the lay of the land closer to the time if that's ok?

I'm a glass half-full kind of guy (usually more concerned with what's in the glass!) so I'm quite sure that another opportunity will come up to see it 🙂 I feel your pain mate. Fingers crossed it will still be photogenic for a while yet. Have you thought of getting to a dark sky spot the next clear night?

This is spectacular. Easily the best one I've seen so far. Congrats Ken!

Clear Outside is showing 100% cloud cover here every night until next Saturday night! 😢

What a frustrating night. I was just about to go to bed (Jul 12, 01:15) when i decided to have a quick look outside (it was supposed to be completely clouded over) and lo-and-behold i could see stars! So i decided to ignore the fact i had already had a few beers, and try and set up the scope in double-quick time, in case i could grab a few quick snaps of Neowise between the clouds. There was only 80 mins of Nautical Darkness left, and i had to set up from scratch, so i decided early on that i would only aim for 30s subs and not even bother guiding or even connecting the dew bands. As it turned out, i couldn't even see Polaris through the polar scope, so had to rely on Sharpcap for the full PA routine (normally i would do a rough PA using EQMod). This took a good 15-20 mins, instead of the usual 5 mins, but i was just happy to get a good PA done! I wasn't prepared at all, so i had to get the RA and Dec co-ordinates from Heavens-Above, and quickly set up a sequence in SGP. Found the comet with no bother and got framed and focused. Then just started shooting 30s subs and hoped for the best. By this time, it was 02:45 and Nautical Darkness had passed. I was just hoping for a 5 min window with no clouds (i took over 70 subs) but alas, no such luck. Despite the skies overhead being totally clear, the clouds to the North never cleared, and every single sub was affected by thick cloud 🙁 Rather than just bin them all, i decided to try and at least process one of them. I was able to find 3 potential candidates where at least a fair bit of the comet was visible (i might still try the other 2) and this was the best i could manage. Happy enough that i at least came out with some sort of image, but boy was it frustrating not to have even a 5 min window of clear sky! The forecast here is pretty terrible now for the next 6 days, so fingers crossed this isn't the only opportunity i get at this. Nikon D5300; HEQ5-Pro 1 x 30s, ISO 200 Calibrated in APP, processed in PS. Thanks for looking and CS!

Hi David I owned the the Qhy163c for just under a year, but due to life getting in the way I only produced 1 broadband image, plus this one, with it before i sold it on. Maybe it was my skies (i was shooting from our new house, which has higher LP, as opposed to the old family home which has better skies, i dunno) but i didn't find the 163c to be that much of a leap over the D5300. Part of that is down to just how good the D5300 is. It's modded and has very low noise compared to the Canons, so it pushes well above it's weight. I absolutely love it and i'll never sell it. I only picked up the 163c on a whim, as it was available at a good price, but i wasn't overly impressed with the noise profile. Every camera is different though, and a lot depends on your skies too, so don't be put off by my experience at all. Some imagers get incredible results with OSC cameras. Richard Sweeney (who i think is in Cork?) is one obvious example. HTH.

Looking good Adam 👍 Crazy to think this is just 20 mins per pane, taken in bright skies. Just imagine what you'll be able to do with this come next month and the return of Astro Dark! 😀

I just checked out your website too Brendan. Very impressive may I say. I was especially drawn to your FSQ130 Seagull nebula image, which is spectacular by the way. It's an object i've always wanted to shoot (along with Rho Ophiuchi) but alas won't be happening anytime soon due to altitude and horizon views. Nice work! 👍

Hi mate Thanks for sharing! The data is good, very good in fact. I couldn't resist having a pop myself. My rough workflow (if i can remember fully, i had a few craft beers to keep me hydrated throughout 😋 ) was as follows: 1. Gradient reduction on the Oiii (using APP). I didn't bother doing it on the Ha. If there is a gradient in the Ha, i couldn't see it. 2. DDP Stretch and crop both stacks. 3. Topaz DeNoise AI ran on both stacks. Some cleanup in PS using the Spot Healing Brush. 4. Run starnet on both the DeNoised Ha and Oiii. Then stretch the Oiii a bit further. 5. Add Ha to Red, Oiii to Blue, then run Carboni's 'Synthesize Green Channel' action, all in PS. This formed the basis for the nebula itself. From here on it's too hard to list exactly what i did (i blame the 8% IPA, lol). It was basically a combination of using the Denoised Ha image as Luminance for the stars, along with a HOO version used for star colour only, plus some cosmetic correction on some of the stars on the inside of the nebula. I also used a lesser-stretched Ha layer as Luminance for some of the really big stars, and then at the very end i did a pass of star reduction in Images Plus. It was a challenging image to process, but lots of fun too, so thanks again for sharing it.

Thanks mate. Tbh i was just messing around, testing out the DeNoise AI program, and I was so surprised at what it was able to do with such rubbish data that i thought i'd share the result in case others might also want to give it a test run. Cheers! Looking forward to see how you get on with yours!

Cheers Adam. I think you're getting your Topaz Denoise programs mixed up (not your fault, they need to come up with more original names!). It sounds like you are referring to their standard DeNoise program, whereas i used Topaz DeNoise AI, which uses a machine-learning algorithm to correct for the noise. I recommend giving it a go for NB. I used it on my recent Pelican Nebula image, which only had 100 mins of Ha as Luminance, and it cleaned up the noisy dark areas amazingly well. With the right settings, it doesn't seem to cause the same smeared look that every other NR routine gives. It also has a sharpen slider, which is quite good too. One quick piece of advice though, make sure to crop your edges off first before running it, as the artefacts interfere with the algorithm and it can cause strange effects in some places.

Thanks mate. In a week's time we will have 2 hrs of Astronomical Twilight up here, which is useable, especially for NB. We just need some clear skies (what are those again?!). I use 2" mounted Baader filters. I never had any halos with my Oiii filter when i used it with my D5300, but i've started to notice them now i've made the jump to mono. I suspect the distance from the sensor is playing a part, but i need to do some testing to confirm that. Here is what the raw Ha and Oii stacks looked like, with nothing but a stretch. The Oiii one is so bad it belongs in the bin, which is exactly where i would have put it, where it not for the fact it may be years before i get another chance to shoot this target again.

Thanks Adrian. I'm not sure how useful it will prove to be on Broadband data, but when it comes to NB (especially so with low amounts of it) it seems to work wonders. It has a fully functional free 30 day trial, so nothing to lose giving it a shot.