Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Comet aligned
This is 144 x 30 second images of the comet aligned on the comet nucleus. It shows the background stars streaking across the comet's path - there are breaks due to pausing acquisition for passing clouds, recentering the image and dithering the guide scope (a technique to reduce hot pixels and other sensor errors). I probably shouldn't dither for comet acquisition!
Any exposures longer than 30 seconds caused unacceptable elongation of the comet nucleus. The comet was moving quite quickly across the night sky at about 9 arcminutes per hour.
The comet's dust tail can be seen but its faint ion tail has been obscured by bright Moon light on the night this image was taken - 4/5 Feb - despite having the equivalent of 72 minutes of data on target.
The colour of the background stars can be readily appreciated.
Technical card as per previous C/2022 E3 (ZTF) image here;
www.flickr.com/photos/16271433@N02/52671792452/in/datepos...
I used SharpCap 4.0 for image acquisition and PixInsight 1.8.9 comet alignment tool to produce this image.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Comet aligned
This is 144 x 30 second images of the comet aligned on the comet nucleus. It shows the background stars streaking across the comet's path - there are breaks due to pausing acquisition for passing clouds, recentering the image and dithering the guide scope (a technique to reduce hot pixels and other sensor errors). I probably shouldn't dither for comet acquisition!
Any exposures longer than 30 seconds caused unacceptable elongation of the comet nucleus. The comet was moving quite quickly across the night sky at about 9 arcminutes per hour.
The comet's dust tail can be seen but its faint ion tail has been obscured by bright Moon light on the night this image was taken - 4/5 Feb - despite having the equivalent of 72 minutes of data on target.
The colour of the background stars can be readily appreciated.
Technical card as per previous C/2022 E3 (ZTF) image here;
www.flickr.com/photos/16271433@N02/52671792452/in/datepos...
I used SharpCap 4.0 for image acquisition and PixInsight 1.8.9 comet alignment tool to produce this image.