Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) (Michael J. Mangieri)

Contains: Solar system body or event

Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1)

Not my best attempt at cometary photography. Everything stacked against me with this comet. Cloudy nights for a long while, then pointing errors. On December 5th I finally got Leonard zeroed in. I used APCC/Horizons to track on the comet figuring I would then stack and register the images easily with the comet head centered on each frame. However, the mount tracked on the comet fairly well, but not perfect enough - there was some drifting in DEC. The result made it impossible to properly register the images as the stars trailed a little on each exposure (as expected) but so did the comet. I was then forced to manually register the frames. With elongated stars I was not able to process an RGB stars only image so I had to settle for the star trails.

Then there was the position of the comet from my location - in the east, south-east, right over Baltimore's light dome, at a fairly low altitude. I didn't have the LP filter installed (I forgot) and so had to process out as much of the skyglow as I could and still get a decent image. But here it is. With the comet dropping lower in the east I doubt I'll have another attempt to capture it in the future.

18x60 Red; 18x60 Green; 20x60 Blue

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5302408
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1)

Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1)

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Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1)

Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1)

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