Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Draco (Dra)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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C/2022 E3 (ZTF)  also known as  'The Green Comet' and NGC 5907 'The Splinter Galaxy', Marc Dickinson
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C/2022 E3 (ZTF) also known as 'The Green Comet' and NGC 5907 'The Splinter Galaxy'

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C/2022 E3 (ZTF)  also known as  'The Green Comet' and NGC 5907 'The Splinter Galaxy', Marc Dickinson
Powered byPixInsight

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) also known as 'The Green Comet' and NGC 5907 'The Splinter Galaxy'

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Description

After waking up at 3:00am and instructing my ASIAIR to ‘GOTO’ the comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) I noticed the splinter galaxy was near the FOV.  So, I did my best to pick a framing that would include both. I've only processed one other comet and forgot how to do this confusing task, so this was an opportunity to relearn.  I used the new updated 'CometAlignment Tool' in PixInsight and found it to work very well at using a 'PSF' to find the comet nucleus centroid for frame alignment.   However, I never got the operand subtraction on 'CometAlignment Tool' to work properly.  It subtracted the comet from some frames very well but not others, more than likely something I am doing wrong.  So, I picked another night to image the stars in the same portion of the sky but without the comet then aligned and combined.  I used Russell Corman's 'StarXTerminator' to remove the stars from the subs and integrated the starless comet. I saved the stars from 'StarXterminator' to also realign and combine later.  After that it was easy to combine the background stars and galaxy with the starless comet and do standard processing.  I think a one-shot-color camera is perhaps a better tool for comets, collecting RGB together and simultaneously would simplify the processing considerably. I may have to get one of those before I try another comet.

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C/2022 E3 (ZTF)  also known as  'The Green Comet' and NGC 5907 'The Splinter Galaxy', Marc Dickinson