Imaged Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on the night of February 29, 2024. The comet is quite bright compared to last December when I first imaged it, with the apparent brightness now ~5th magnitude. Transparency was average at best on this night and I was not able to capture much detail in the tail this session.
Imaged 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 ~30 minutes: 21 subs at Gain = 100 with an exposure time of 90 seconds.
Processing steps: I've been working on upping my comet processing skills and subscribed to Adam Block's 'comet academy' to see if I could add a few new approaches to the processing toolbox. I processed these comet images using my typical approach (see description in:
https://astrob.in/915wt1/0/) and using the 'standard OSC comet' approach described by Adam (see:
https://www.adamblockstudios.com/categories/comet-academy). My initial impression is that the comet itself came out similar using both my previous and the comet academy approaches, but the background and hence final image was far better using the comet academy approach. Overall, I found the comet academy tutorial very helpful and am looking forward to working through the remaining lessons. I'm also going to see if I can work out a hybrid approach, since my previous approach is much less labor/time intensive than the comet academy OSC approach.
Original version: Comet+stars image, processed using the comet academy standard OSC approach
Rev B: Comet+stars image, processed using my typical approach
Rev C: Comet only image, comet academy OSC processing
Rev D: Comet only image, comet academy OSC processing (inverted)
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