Wanderer in the Deep (donald108)

Wanderer in the Deep

Revision title: NGC5907

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:

```
max(comet_lrgb, lrgb)
```

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!

Please check out my instagram for more astroimages.

Final
Original
B
C
D

B

Title: Starless

Description: Starless version of the original image

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: NGC5907

Description: Crop on NGC5907, showing a hint of the tidal tail

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: NGC5905

Description: Crop on NGC5905 & NGC5908

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7531180
PixInsight job	ZJG285LCU6NUWXBK063DT2TZG4O553GP
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	15h16m24s.59
RA (top/left)	15h14m57s.67
RA (top/right)	15h15m01s.27
RA (bottom/right)	15h17m50s.35
RA (bottom/left)	15h17m49s.50

Dec (center)	+56°21′44″.1
Dec (top/left)	+56°37′18″.9
Dec (top/right)	+56°05′50″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+56°06′05″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+56°37′34″.7

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