12P/Pons–Brooks is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 71 years. Comets with an orbital period of 20–200 years are referred to as Halley-type comets. It is one of the brightest known periodic comets, reaching an absolute visual magnitude of about 5 in its approach to perihelion. Comet Pons-Brooks was definitely discovered at Marseilles Observatory in July 1812 by Jean-Louis Pons, and on its next appearance in 1883 by William Robert Brooks. There are ancient records of comets that are suspected of having been apparitions of 12P/Pons–Brooks.
The next perihelion passage is 21 April 2024, with closest approach to Earth being 1.55 AU (232 million km) on 2 June 2024.[10] The comet is expected to brighten to about apparent magnitude 4.5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12P/Pons%E2%80%93Brooks'...during the month of April. With its closest approach occurring just a few days before a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, it presents a unique opportunity for skywatchers to potentially view the comet during the eclipse. However, since the comet's brightness can be unpredictable, there is no guarantee it will be visible...'
https://theskylive.com/12p-info-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio went out to do an imaging session the only clear night in weeks after work, March 7th. He arrived at a farm field near the town but the owner denied him the possibility of placing the telescope there... He then went to the parking lot of a small stadium, placed the scope and started taking photos when guess what? The Stadium lights turned on because the local team went to train.
A night No-No. It had to go from 30 seconds to 10s and then 6s of exposure. When I tried to process that data, seeing the poor result, it was better to throw it away.
A week later, Maurizio saw that central Italy was going to have good weather. He took a day of off and drove 400 km towards the Apennines, a place called La Faggia at 740 masl, on a hill where the view was clear to capture the Pons-Brooks. That was the first comet of four that he would catch that night.
I made a first stack in DSS to get the comet-only and another stack for the stars-comet for the star base. I was very happy to observe the level of details that came out of the comet despite the fact that of the initial 47 frames, 14 showed satellite traces and one from an airplane (which I discarded).
I decided to make another comet-only stack with the best frames, which in this case were the first 12 of the sequence and try on the one hand to obtain more details of the comet and on the other to see if with the StarExterminator could remove the trace of the stars and leave a clean image. And it happened, the result was perfect, very clean although I had to clean some fine traces in sensitive areas and some artifacts left by the tool.
Clarity, dehaze, and white were applied on Ps CamRaw tool. Then Noise exterminator and Topaz were applied and a balance of the black point was made in both stack results that were later combined at 60-40% and finally the star base was added.
I'm very pleased how this turn out. Also I notice several details as an extra plasma trace in one of the side head. Is really a nice looking comet, can not imagine how will be in the next weeks aproach the perihelion, will be fantastic to image it. I hope Maurizio have another opportunity in this one.
I wanted to finish this work for Maurizio's birthday which was two days ago, although late, here is my gift!
Thank you for visiting us and everyone have many Clear Skies to enjoy these sporadic visitor and all the wonders that are in the heavens!
Processed March 2024
https://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1772984960858607993 
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