Determined

This image is of C/2025 A6 (Lemmon). I imagined this last Friday. Currently, it’s a pretty bright comet that’s shining at a magnitude 5. From the city and urban areas, it’s not naked eye visible, but from a dark sky site it can be seen through binoculars and long exposure photography.

 

This image was a challenge for me to get. After setting up my rig and powering everything on, I discovered the ASIAIR couldn’t detect my guide camera. At the time I couldn’t figure out why the guide camera wasn’t working. That meant I either couldn’t lock onto a guide star or I would have to manually dither. I was determined to make this image work especially since I paid an entrance fee of $15 to get into the local state park. I ended up setting an auto run sequence of 3 (30 second) exposures. After each auto run sequence I moved the framing ever so slightly in the sky atlas of the ASIAIR app. I repeated this until I got about 35 minutes worth of data. To top it off, the area I was set up gets a little breezy as the night goes on. So, some of the frames werent exactly sharp. Nevertheless, I managed to get enough data to build an image. Later, I discovered my USB cord for the guide camera was bad. The next day I ordered spare USB cords for my rig so I didn’t have another dilemma again.

 

Image Detail:

- 17 minutes of total integration time (30 seconds, gain 100, camera cooled to 14 degrees)

Equipment:

- SVBONY SV503 80ED

- Sky Watcher Star Adventurer GTi

- ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro

- ZWO ASIAIR Mini

- ZWO EAF

- ZWO 120MM guide camera

- ZWO guide scope

 

Software:

- PixInsight

- Adobe Photoshop

- RC Astro Blur Xterminator

- RC Astro Noise Xterminator

- RC Astro Star Xterminator

Done