18 minutes of Lovejoy between the clouds

[cfpendock]

Managed to get 6 x 3 minute subs tonight before the clouds rolled in.  So, a bit noisy and no colour.  And one or two strange artefacts courtesy of DSS. But I was interested to see it!

Chris

 

[Uplooker]

Very well done, that has come out really well. I have no idea how people are managing to image tonight, its blowing an absolute hooley here.

Ian

[Mick J]

Nice work,  thanks

[sharkmelley]

Very nice indeed!  Excellent tail detail.

Mark

[laser_jock99]

Nice!

[Sam]

Very nice detail is the tail!

[Chris]

Well played, that's a cracker!

[Davey-T]

Lovely tail, something I have so far failed to capture, hope we get at least one more clear night with no wind to try again.

Dave

What equipment did you use ?

Edited January 11, 2015 by Davey-T

[Pete Presland]

Another cracker, the tail is particularly stunning!

[cfpendock]

Thanks everyone.  The fun part was coaxing the tail out of the murk.  

Hopefully we will get some more possibilities with this comet before it disappears... I would like to have a go in colour.

Davey -  I used the FSQ106 at 385mm, and the Atik4000.

[PeterCPC]

Great shot!

Peter

[Davey-T]

Thanks everyone.  The fun part was coaxing the tail out of the murk.  

Hopefully we will get some more possibilities with this comet before it disappears... I would like to have a go in colour.

Davey -  I used the FSQ106 at 385mm, and the Atik4000.

Thanks for the info Chris, I have been using 10" SCT and DSLR but not found any sign of a tail, may dig the W0 110FLT out of it's box and try with my Atik 4000.

Last night was another failure in spite of being prepared. PHD started sending South instead of North guiding corrections, by the time I'd set up another laptop and Loadstar, had to download drivers for the Loadstar which is a lot of faffing about, got it guiding nicely, Lovejoy was heading into the orange glow of SE London, just hope I can manage one decent image of it before it disappears

Dave

[lambertdana47]

Very good! All I have been able to get is a smudge with the moon and sky killing me.

Dana lambert

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[cfpendock]

Thanks for the info Chris, I have been using 10" SCT and DSLR but not found any sign of a tail, may dig the W0 110FLT out of it's box and try with my Atik 4000.

Last night was another failure in spite of being prepared. PHD started sending South instead of North guiding corrections, by the time I'd set up another laptop and Loadstar, had to download drivers for the Loadstar which is a lot of faffing about, got it guiding nicely, Lovejoy was heading into the orange glow of SE London, just hope I can manage one decent image of it before it disappears

Dave

Dave, that tail is VERY faint.  1st look from the stacked images showed nothing - it was only endless tiny applications of curves in photoshop which led to the tail appearing.  In fact, the central part of the histogram is so far stretched that it was becoming posterised at even with 16-bit processing.

With a 10" SCT I would have thought that the focal length, even with a reducer would not show much tail - my image was taken at 385mm, but if I get the chance I would actually prefer to use my 200mm DSLR lens.  I didn't bother guiding for the 3 minute subs - not enough time between clouds to set it up!

Chris 

[Paul73]

Lovely. Best yet!

Paul

[Twisted Lip]

Simply stunning, I really like it. Might sounds a stupid question but what did you guide on? The comet or the stars? Everything looks as crisp as you like!

Cheers

Will

[cfpendock]

Thanks for your kind comments Paul and Will.  

Will, actually I didn't guide at all - the subs were only 3 minutes and I didn't think it necessary.  To overcome the changing position of the comet I used the comet stacking function in DSS which stacks twice - the first time for the comet, and then for the stars.  I did originally think about doing two sets of subs - one for the comet and one for the stars but available time ruled that out.  The only snag with using DSS in this way is that it does introduce some artefacts, for example the larger stars look slightly haloed and out of focus, and the head of the comet has some strange protuberances.

Chris