Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) and galaxies

[emyliano2000]

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) (Take II)

 

This time I captured a few galaxies in the foreground too.

 

Antlia V-Pro Blue 36 mm: 15×120″(30′)

Antlia V-Pro Green 36 mm: 15×120″(30′

Antlia V-Pro Luminance 36 mm: 40×120″(1h 20′)

Antlia V-Pro Red 36 mm: 14×120″(28′)

Total Integration:

2h 48′

Stacked in AstroPixel Processor and processed in Pixinsight, with the help of Noise and Star Xterminator, and Photoshop CC 2023

I used a method somebody shared on facebook and I'm really pleased with it.

First in APP I registered all the subs on the comet and saved tham all, after that I registered all the subs on the stars and saved them all.

I took the comet registered subs into pixinsight and with the Process batch in StarXterminator, I removed the stars from all of them. This took quite a while but the result was great.

When the star removal was finished, I integrated each channel of the starless comet and the each channel of the stars. I did a LRGB combination for the starless comet and a LRGB for the stars and galaxies but because the stars were quite bright in the LRGB, I also did a RGB combination for the stars only.

I aligned the LRGB for the stars and galaxies and the RGB for the stars with one of the subs registered on the comet to make sure I have everything in the right position, removed the stars from the LRGB for stars and galaxies to be able to add the galaxies to the starless comet and made a star mask from the RGB stars so I can add it to the LRGB starless comet + galaxies. I tried StarXterminatoon but for some reason the extracted stars looked awful. Starnet did a much better job. Obviously, I had to clone stamp the trailed comet from the starless LRGB for galaxies.

At the end I had a LRGB starless comet image, a LRGB starless galaxies image and a RGB image with the stars all aligned and ready to be moved into photoshop.

I added the galaxies to the starless comet as a layer in lighten mode and the stars in screen mode.

I hope this helps other people too.

Emil