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Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
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c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023

Revision title: Comet with Starfield

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
Powered byPixInsight

c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023

Revision title: Comet with Starfield

Equipment

Imaging Telescopes Or Lenses
Vixen AX103S
Imaging Cameras
ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Mounts
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Filters
Baader UV/IR Cut / Luminance 2"
Accessories
Vixen Focal Reducer for AX103S
Software
Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP)

Acquisition details

Date: Jan. 31, 2023

Time: 02:00

Frames: 40

Exposure per frame: 30000 ms

Focal length: 578

Seeing: 2

Transparency: 5

RA center: 08h10m16s.46

DEC center: +78°04′25″.9

Pixel scale: 1.309 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: -79.836 degrees

Field radius: 1.192 degrees

WCS transformation: thin plate spline

More info:Open 

Find images in the same area

Resolution: 5526x3524

File size: 111.5 MB

Locations: Milwaukee Astronomical Society, New Berlin, WI, United States

Data source: Backyard

Description

I had a fun adventure on a Monday night into Tuesday morning, finally catching comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) at the Milwaukee Astronomical Society grounds in -5 degree F temps at 3am one early morning before it reached its closest point to Earth. The night started off with more clouds, after what has seemed to be months of them, so I did a little shoveling around the grounds to keep warm - temps started dropping to 5 degrees by around 9-10pm. It's amazing how anxious we get for a potential clear sky after so long! Finally 11pm came, and my stubbornness paid off - the high clouds started to lift even though the moon was still very bright and was washing the sky out a bit, generating a 17.75 SQM reading at the time. Temps were hovering around zero now however. What better time to set up cold metal equipment to get scope #2 going... The resulting picture below is my early effort of registering the comet, aligning and stacking the 30 second frames I was shooting with my Vixen AX103s refractor reduced to 578mm and the ZWO 2600mc with my ASIair system.

For the processing I decided to use Astro Pixel Processor, as the comet stacking and registration is efficient to run for share and processing. I also opted to keep the star blur in there, rather than the less authentic method of processing once with stars and again without. I may try a combined method of stars + comet, but life moves on meanwhile and this image felt a bit more realistic to discovering the comet in motion, registering the comet to get data after increasing the rejection levels to maximize star reduction.

Comments

Revisions

  • c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
    Original
  • c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
    B
  • Final
    c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
    C
  • c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf
    D

B

Title: Plain processing with NoiseXterminator and ABE

Description: Only slight noise reduction and a run of ABE for the gradient

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Comet with Starfield

Description: Starfield added back into the image

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: Final Starless Pass, Most Rejection

Description: Final rework of the starless version with higher rejection settings, useful to prep for combining in to a starfield shot vs letting some of the streaking show for movement.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

c/2022 C3 (ZTF) - Jan 31, 2023, psychwolf

In these public groups

Milwaukee Astronomical Society
Vixen Astrophotography
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