Decided to try Lovejoy again while waiting for Jupiter to rise so I could attempt imaging the triple shadow transit. Found the comet by Astrotortilla plate solving to sync the PicGoto, followed by a goto the coordinates reported in Astroplanner. This worked great. Guided on the comet nucleus. The sky was darker than it was on 7 Jan, and I can see a lot more tail than then. The proper motion was also noticeably less than it was on the 7th.
Reprocessed roughly following the method of Tony Cook (
http://astrob.in/151422/0/) except I didn’t do any sieving; it didn’t seem to help. As a result, I still have some star trail streaking in the comet’s tail, but I think this is dramatically better than what I got earlier. Deep Sky Stacker’s “comet only” mode gave me a sharper comet than I was able to get stacking with Nebulosity. I darkened the overall image to remove some of the star trail streaking, but this sacrificed some of the tail. I’ll probably post another version with more of the tail remaining.
Date: 23 Jan 2015
Subject: Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy
Scope: Orion ST80 + Antares 0.5x telereducer
Filter: Baader Fringe Killer
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.4.2 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc no cooling (5 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.2, no dither
Exposure: 45x120 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, no flats, histogram match, debayer, trans (only) align, 0.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Develop 69.89%; Color:Scientific 201%; HDR
ptimize; Life:Less=More; Track 2.0 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools 2 stages of dust & scratches with Gaussian blurred layer masks to take out one slight dust bunny; Astroframe.
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