Comet Panstarrs C/2011 L4
Comet in Cassiopeia
For Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Uploaded 4/24/13

 

            
 The comet
            has finally gotten high enough in the morning sky to see it with
            the 12.5" Newtonian in the backyard observatory! While still
            only 25 degrees up, the 5th magnitude object shows a remarkable
            level of tail development consisting of a broad fan, and a side
            fan of material that is not quite sun pointing. There seems to
            be no trace of blues or greens here, indication of an exclusively
            dusty object with very little ion tail activity.

            
This shot was produced
            by taking 20 minutes of autoguided luminance data, followed by
            2 minute RGB shots. The RGB data was combined in Photoshop layered
            right on the star trails - 10 separate copies. Then combined
            with "Lighten". This was then used as the final color
            data for the trailed L data, which is tracked on the comets head.
            this is the only way we can use a single set to color an image
            that is trailed as it follows the comets motion.



            

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Lens:  12.5" f/5 Newtonian Astrograph with SBIG ST10XMe CCD
Platform:  Televue GEM
Exposure:  26m total
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  42F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DSLR, Photoshop CS2

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