Deep Sky Camp - 5th to 7th April

[Fay]

excellent Jim, unguided too!

[Tony G]

Well done Jim great image, and you can say that you seen the comet, unlike some.
I see in the top left hand corner a satellite passing..........did Mark get the ISS in the same frame? 

Tony G

[Rocket Pooch]

Well done team, and I'm glad you have now seen how wrong the forecasts are around here, they are all based on Horsham not little old campsite.  It's been really cold here for 3 months now, I can only guess what my heating bill is

Jim, yay comet!

[JohnP]

Excellent Jim & Mike on capturing comet - hopefully some other images to - I look forward to seeing them - John

[The Thing]

Excellent comet Jim, you must be really chuffed. Mike's isn't bad either. Was any other imaging managed after all that wine and guest entertaining?

[mickw]

Cracking image Jim and far better than the weird looking thing on APOD

[MarkS]

Really good image Jim!!  It has come out really well!

The background subtraction can't have been easy because the sky was relatively bright down where the comet was.

Mark

[Jim]

Thanks everyone. I was lucky in that I had spent hours the previous night getting a good polar alignment so I was able to lock onto it straight away. I did get some colour data but can't seem to process it; I think because the comet is moving relative to the stars and each channel was taken together so they are some minutes apart. I think you probably need to guide on the comet itself and maybe use a one shot colour camera to get a good result. I think using the CLS filter helped the background.

[julian]

Very nice image Jim

julian

[RobertM]

Well done Mike and Jim, two decent images of the comet at last (apologies for anyone's image I may have missed ).

Jim, I don't think I've seen a better image of this comet, it a really good  capture.

Robert

[Mike]

Processed my image of the comet. It is very noisy as I completely forgot to do darks and I also had the ISO setting at 6400. DOH!.

7 x 30 second exposures with Nikon D7000. Guided on the comet head.

[RobertM]

Very nice that.

Processed my image of the comet. It is very noisy as I completely forgot to do darks and I also had the ISO setting at 6400. DOH!.

Well I don't think you'll be the only one, I'm sure most of us will be a bit rusty when we finally start imaging again !

Robert

[Mike]

Well I don't think you'll be the only one, I'm sure most of us will be a bit rusty when we finally start imaging again !

Ouch!   

[julian]

Very nice image Mike

julian

[MarkS]

Beautiful image Mike!

Don't worry about the ISO 6400 - the high ISO won't add noise to the image - it will just restrict the dynamic range and dynamic range is not so essential in this particular image.  The only thing likely to saturate is the comet's head.

You said you guided on the comet's head - did you notice any movement against the star background at that scale?

I haven't had a chance to look at my widefield data - I've been working on the shed all daylight hours since arriving home (including day off work on Monday).

Mark