67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is now getting further away, but it still features a nice tail. Initially took the image because Sky Safari showed that it would be in the proximity of C/1997 B1 (Kobayashi) and would have made a nice shot of two comets in the same field. I was too tired to double-check, so I started shooting anyway, but either the coordinates were off, or the comet is too faint for this setup. There are some Mag. 18 stars in the image and maybe even fainter, so I'm not sure what happened.Even 67P alone was very nice to see and it has been beautiful for this pass; next time it will reach this magnitude might be around Nov. 2034!I'll post a comet-aligned stack as well after I have time to go through the process again.
Date: 2022-01-04, 00:37:42 UTC - 01:50:40 UTC
Location: Runcu Stone (830m ASL), average 21.3 M/arcsec^2
OTA: TS Photoline 90/600 FPL53 triplet with TSFLAT2,5
Camera: Nikon Z6
Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6-Pro (belt mod)
Guiding: ASI Air Pro with ASI290MM mini on 60/280 guider scope
Lights: 60x60s, ISO4000, of which 34 were selected (quite windy)
Darks: 100x60s
Flats: 100x0.05s (flat panel)
Processed in Pixinsight (ImageCalibration, CosmeticCorrection, Debayer, SubframeSelector, StarAlignment, Integration, DrizzleIntegration, Crop, DBE, DBE, TGV denoise, MMT denoise, MaskedStretch, HistorgramTransformation to restore contrast lost in MS, CurvesTransformation to restore star colors, ACDNR on background, CurvesTransformation to desaturate background noise) and Photoshop (curves).
Astrometric job:
https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/5519327#annotatedComet info and ephemeris:
https://theskylive.com/67p-info
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