This image is the official first light image from my new QHY 268M, it showcases Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) passing near NGC 5907 on the night of the 23rd January 2023, in pure LRGB. This image has been a nightmare to process & I'm finally happy enough with the image to share it with you all. Now that this is complete, I look forward to sharing more images from the new camera in the future.
I've left some processing notes about the difficultly of this below.
- The final image is a composite of the following:
- The comet passing by the galaxy on the night of the 23rd January, 2023 (30x45s RGB, 91x90s Lum)
- This got both for the comet itself, as well as the composition for the final image
- The background taken throughout 28th January -> 27th February 2023
- I will also note, that the comet was isolated from the background by following the below steps (similar to what I used on my initial attempt):
- All frames were aligned onto the comet
- StarX was ran on all frames
- Frames were stacked to isolate the comet
- The final image was created by the following:
- Processing the isolated comet image to bring out detail
- Processing the background like a normal DSO photo
- Trying to balance detail, saturation, and bring out the tidal stream near NGC5907 was, by far, the hardest part of the process overall
- I have also found problems with my flats which made preprocessing the background even harder
- Running StarX on the background to remove the stars
- Using PixelMath to insert the comet into the LRGB image:
- Extract L of the comet image
- Perform a HistrogramTransform to brighten the L image slightly
- Set the L image as a mask over the LRGB image
- Add back the stars from StarX
As always, any & all feedback is always appreciated! I hope you enjoy the final image!
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