C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy 3.5 hour tail animation 10 Jan 2015

[sharkmelley]

Last night (Saturday) I captured 3.5 hours of data and turned it into an animation:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1lvf37uuv8esnqu/lovejoy20150110.gif?dl=0

You probably need to select the "Download" option in order to play it.
 

Here is a single frame to give a preview of size and quality:

In the first half the very thin high level cloud makes the tail a bit less distinct and also causes changes the apparent brightness of the comet coma. However there is enough detail to show fascinating changes in the tail structure.  Again I wonder if this is caused by rotation of the comet body.

Technical details:  Canon 350D on Takahashi Epsilon 180ED.  192 exposures of 60 seconds each at ISO 400.  This has been turned into a 62 frame animation by performing a running average of 7 frames i.e. each video frame is 7 minutes of data.

Enjoy!

Mark

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Real stunner!

[Bizibilder]

An amazing animation!  That is a huge amount of change in only just over 3 hours.  Very well done indeed.

[Mick J]

Very nice, that looks a bright lump against the star background, nice detail in the tail.  thanks

[sharkmelley]

Sorry - I seem to have posted this in the Observing section instead of the Imaging section

If a moderator can move it I'm happy for them to do so.

Mark

[Bizibilder]

Done  .

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely images some excellent detail in the tail.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I showed this to my kids yesterday, and they were blown away by it.