2010-09-29 Comet 103P Hartley
26x 30 second exposures (I shot 42 exposures but the rest were too poor to use due to vibrations in the telescope mount), shot between 10:26pm and 11:36pm, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker so that the comet, which moves noticeably by the minute, is held still while the stars are allowed to streak.
7.5 inch Maksutov Newtonian telescope F5.3, 1000mm. ISO6400 .. so there's lots of noise in the exposures. I currently have to use a 1.6x barlow lens in the telescope in order to use the camera, until I get the right adapter for this scope. With the barlow, and the camera's crop factor, I was really shooting at F13.5 / 2560mm, so the view is more narrow and dark that it would otherwise be. 13 minutes total exposure time.
This image really only shows the core of the comet, the glowing ball of gas and dust around the comet extends out past all the edges of this image, giving the stars a greenish tinge throughout.
The gaps in the star streaks are time periods between exposures, the bigger gaps are when I was trying to rid my telescope of dew
Comet 103P Hartley is a periodic comet that returns every 6.5 years. It might become visible by eye in October. On this night it had a magnitude of 7.6 and was in the constellation of Cassiopeia
2010-09-29 Comet 103P Hartley
26x 30 second exposures (I shot 42 exposures but the rest were too poor to use due to vibrations in the telescope mount), shot between 10:26pm and 11:36pm, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker so that the comet, which moves noticeably by the minute, is held still while the stars are allowed to streak.
7.5 inch Maksutov Newtonian telescope F5.3, 1000mm. ISO6400 .. so there's lots of noise in the exposures. I currently have to use a 1.6x barlow lens in the telescope in order to use the camera, until I get the right adapter for this scope. With the barlow, and the camera's crop factor, I was really shooting at F13.5 / 2560mm, so the view is more narrow and dark that it would otherwise be. 13 minutes total exposure time.
This image really only shows the core of the comet, the glowing ball of gas and dust around the comet extends out past all the edges of this image, giving the stars a greenish tinge throughout.
The gaps in the star streaks are time periods between exposures, the bigger gaps are when I was trying to rid my telescope of dew
Comet 103P Hartley is a periodic comet that returns every 6.5 years. It might become visible by eye in October. On this night it had a magnitude of 7.6 and was in the constellation of Cassiopeia