Contains:  Solar system body or event
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C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, Alex

C/2020 F3 NEOWISE

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, Alex

C/2020 F3 NEOWISE

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

My second attempt at catching comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE after my first attempt was let down by the technology! My imaging computer decided it didn't want to talk to either of my cameras. Luckily I had a backup of the OS that did work and a second clear night (pretty unusual round here!) and so I was able to capture this.

With hindsight 60 second RGB exposures were too long, the comet is moving so fast that it moves a noticible distance between exposures and that can be see in the RGB coloured star trails. I healed the worst of them in Photoshop, but some will still be present if looked for.

Equipment:

iOptron CEM25P mount

Skywatcher ED80 DS Pro (510mm Focal Length with 0.85x Reducer/Flattener)

ZWO ASI 183MM Pro Imaging Camera (Cooled to -15 degC)

ZWO ASI 120MM-S Guide Camera

ZWO Mini EFW

SkyWatcher 9x50 Finder as guide scope

Nanopi M4 running Armbian with KStars and EKOS/INDI for capture and guiding

Acquisition:

Night of the 21st of July 2020

107 x 15secs Luminance

3 x 60secs Red

3 x 60secs Green

3 x 60secs Blue

Almost 36 mins Total Exposure

64 darks

25 flats

256 bias

Pre-Processing:

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker using align on comet mode

Main Image Processing in Star Tools:

Bin 50%

Crop

Wipe

Develop

HDR

Contrast

Colour

Psychovisual De-Noise

Plus healing tool in Photoshop to get rid of the worst of the coloured star trails.

Comments

Histogram

C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, Alex