Comet Catalina- What A Tricky Son Of A .....

[pyrasanth]

If anybody told me that capturing comets  was difficult I would not have believed them. How wrong I was- it is a real pig of a job with manual RGB filters.

The image below has taken weeks to capture because of the simply horrible weather we have been having. Before yesterday the comet was low & always hanging in the muck of the lower atmosphere & the very few clear nights we had were plagued by the moon swamping out what very little tail detail was visible. I had multiple attempts but failed mostly as I needed a clear six hours to capture the comet in a whole session as the ever changing position & tail meant that it had to be finished inn one night.

Last night the conditions were as good as we are going to get. Clear nearly moonless skies from 10 PM to dawn. Last night was going to be comet night if it killed me!

I knew that the RASA had the correct image scale to get the tail but the choice of exposures was going to be critical. The RASA is fast but that means we get all the light pollution as well. I know that L is not a good channel for me so I sort of cheated as I will explain later.

I set the Paramount to track the comet & not the stars & took the following exposures. L (54 x 2 mins) R (30 x 2 mins) G (30 x 2 mins) B (30 x 2 mins). I stacked all the  images using pixinsight & removed all the stars from the RGB images. I stacked the L & produced a star mask & appended the stars to the comet image as an additional layer in Photoshop. I don't know why but the Pixinsight LRGB combination tool was not playing nice

The filters used are Baader 2" LRGB filters & the camera an Atik 11000 mono.

I hope you like the effort. I just need to remove the star panda eyes & the image will be good. I admire anybody who shoots comets- they are tricky sons of .........

Try & capture this comet if you can as I don't think we will see it again.

[pyrasanth]

There are more pictures in Earthsky worth a look- http://earthsky.org/todays-image/best-photos-of-comet-c2013-us10-catalina

[Barry-Wilson]

Excellent work.

Not had the bravery to try a comet yet, so good for you.

If you work on the stars as you suggest this will be a real cracker and an image to be justly proud of.

[sharkmelley]

That's a great result!  The ion tail is very faint now and you've done a great job in bringing it out. 

Mark

[pyrasanth]

That's a great result!  The ion tail is very faint now and you've done a great job in bringing it out. 

Mark

Are......so that's why I had trouble catching the tail when compared with some pictures earlier in the month packed full of detail. Perhaps now there is very little to capture!- I thought I was doing something wrong.

[sharkmelley]

Are......so that's why I had trouble catching the tail when compared with some pictures earlier in the month packed full of detail. Perhaps now there is very little to capture!- I thought I was doing something wrong.

I took an image at the beginning of December and the two tails came out very nicely.  I took another at the beginning of January in better conditions when it was higher in the sky and this time the ion tail was really difficult. I'm still struggling

Mark

[Owmuchonomy]

Very nice. Pete Lawrence @avertedvision on Twitter has captured it very well and it shows two ion tails plus the dust tail.

[astro mick]

Nice capture,had ago myself,as you say was not a walk in the park.

Mick.

[laudropb]

Very nice capture and lovely image. Your hard work has paid off.