Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Boötes (Boo)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition, Brent Newton
Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition
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Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition

Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition, Brent Newton
Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition
Powered byPixInsight

Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition

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Description

I first stacked the star field in mosaic mode to get the largest view that I could. Following this, I split my Lights into 3 stacks, 1 out of every 3 was distributed into a different stack sequentially from when they were taken (ie images 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 were assigned A, B, C, A, B, C, etc), then each new folder was separately stacked into 3 comet-freeze images. These 3 images were then manually aligned in Photoshop and combined using median layering. This essentially removed all the trailed stars in the background. Since the comet did not move significantly during each picture, I did not need to alter the central bright point to be round.

I processed the star field and isolated comet separately but used nearly identical curves adjustments to ensure neither would look blown out when combined. I then loaded my reference frame into the star field, aligned it to the stars using Difference layering mode, and then overlayed the processed comet onto the comet on the reference frame. I removed the reference frame, set the Comet layer to "Lighten" (to allow background stars back through) and from there processing went fairly straightforward. A few curves, some color, and final denoising.

I couldn't be happier with how this turned out. I've shied away from comets so far, being much more eager to process the distant and grand nebulae and galaxies which come around every New Moon. Comets seemed boring in that they are stuck in our solar system - the fact that some never return never occurred to me. This one has already passed its closest point to Earth and with an eccentricity of > 1, is already doomed to be flung from our star and disappear into interstellar space. I find that both melancholic and worthy of remembering. Learning these new processing techniques really got me back into the swing of image processing in Photoshop, after 3 months of useless weather conditions, and I am happy to be back.

This method was found on Tony Cook's page in the links below. He definitely deserves some credit on how this turned out, these are real easy to follow if anyone has problems processing their comets:

https://www.astrobin.com/151422/

https://www.astrobin.com/288768/?nc=all

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Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson near Opposition, Brent Newton

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