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 HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS