Imaged Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on the night of November 27, 2023. The comet had an apparent magnitude (v) of ~9 and the coma had an apparent size of ~3 arcsec. There is some structure to the coma (a dark cleft in the bright coma that shows up most clearly in my starless image) that looks similar to features reported earlier this month at:
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=18&month=11&year=2023Reference information on this comet at:
https://theskylive.com/12p-infoImaged with a William Optics GT81 at F4.7 (382 mm focal length) using Flat6A II field flattener/0.8x reducer, UVIRcut filter, and ZWO ASI 533MC Pro.
Total integration time of ~45 minutes: 25 subs at Gain = 100 with an exposure time of 90 seconds.
Processing steps:
- All images pre-processed using Pixinsight's weighted batch pre-processing script (WBPP) to perform calibration, debayering, and star registration. Batch processed using ABE to remove gradients from individual images.
- Comet only image processing: Generated individual comet only sub images using StarXterminator. Comet only images aligned using comet alignment process then integrated. Comet only master image processed as follows: clone stamp process used to clean up artifacts from star x terminator process, blur x terminator, noise x terminator, histogram stretch using STF parameters, curves adjustment, and EZ HDR script applied.
- Stars only image processing: Comet alignment process run in subtract mode (using comet master) on registered and ABE processed subs to generate stars only image. Stars only master image processed as follows: spcc, blur x terminator, noise x terminator, star x terminator and clone stamp processes used to clean up comet residuals, and histogram stretch using STF parameters.
- Combined starless and stars images using pixelmath process.
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