Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) on January 27th

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) in the early morning of January 27, 2023.

The comet was discovered in March 2022 at the Zwicky Transient Facility telescope, thus the ZTF name.

 

 

Equipment:

SkyWatcher EQ6-R

Nikkor 500mm f/4 P AI-S at f/4

Sony a7RIIIa (unmodified)

ZWO 30mm Guide scope

GPCAM2 Mono Camera

 

Acquisition:

Taos, NM: my back yard - Bortle 3

4 x 121" for 8 minutes and 4 seconds of exposure time.

2 dark frames

15 flats frames

15 bias frames

 

Software:

SharpCap

DeepSkyStacker

Photoshop

Lightroom

 

My Sony a7RIII and adapted Nikkor 500mm f/4 P AI-S were mounted on an ADM vixen rail and secured to the SkyWatcher EQ6-R mount. I polar aligned my mount using SharpCap Pro. I struggled with getting guiding going and decided to trust my mount to track accurately. I took 4 121-second exposures and dark, flat, and bias frames. DeepSkyStacker was used to combine all frames, and then I processed the TIFF file in Photoshop. I stretched the 32-bit file using Levels. I then made it a 16-bit file and continued to stretch the file in levels and curves. I used the color sampler tool and levels to do my best to help keep colors accurate. I then used my skillset, including some dodging & burning, and relied on Astronomy Tools Action Set and Topaz Denoise to give the image a polished look. I brought it into Lightroom to do final color corrections and add EXIF data. I did not attempt to account for the comet's movement, and you can see the nucleus is elongated.

Done