Comet Pons / Brooks
in the evening sky
12/5/23

 

            
 Now sinking
            fast in the western sky at dusk, I was able to shoot this incoming
            comet very briefly before it went into the trees west of the
            observatory! The last half of the shooting session was unusable
            because of branches in the shots. Here is the best of what I
            did get, 4x5m on Luminance Binned 1, and 3 mins each on RGB binned
            2x2. This expanding jelly fish shape is becoming predominant,
            and is expected to continue to get larger and brighter over the
            next few months as it skims the western horizon.

            
A final note - I
            used my Starizona Nexus focal reducer field flattener here yielding
            a faster f/2.9 and a bit more field to work with.

            

            
Select an image size for a larger view:

1600 x 1200
            


Lens:  10" f/2.9 GSO Astrograph Newtonian w/Nexus corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200
Camera:  Atik 16200 CCD
Exposure:  30mins LRGB
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  42F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2

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