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Riding high in
            the coils of Draco the sea serpent, Comet Lovejoy still has some
            surprises to offer the astroimager. On this night, the comet
            came very close to the 14.8 magnitude SBb galaxy UGC 8467, the
            galaxies central bar can be seen clearly. The comet itself is
            near magnitude 12.7, and is very faint visually. Surprisingly,
            the coma is still a rich green color and the nearly 1/4 degree
            tail can be seen extending to the edges of this half degree tall
            field.

            
This is my longest
            exposure ever of a comet. With 2h of integration time, faint
            background galaxies abound. A fine example is the 17.6th magnitude
            edge on to the lower right. This is an irregular type only 1.4
            arcminutes on a side, and full of knots and fine details. Most
            of the other smaller galaxies seen here are near 20 - 22nd magnitude.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Mount:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG 10XME NABG with Enhanced Water Cooling
Guider: DSI Pro w/Lumicon Newt Easy Guider
Exposure:  LRGB = 60:20:20:20 (RGB Binned 2x2)
AstroDon RGB Combine Ratio:  1: 1.05: 1.11
Location:  Payson, Arizona, Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 5 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  55 F
CCD Temperature:  -30 C
Image Processing Tools: 
Maxim DL:  Calibration, deblooming (Starizona Debloomer), aligning, stacking
PixInsight:  Curves, Deconvolution, noise reduction
Photoshop CS2:  Curves, Color Correction, Gradient removal (Grad Xterminator), Cleanup

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