Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
Powered byPixInsight

C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack

C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
Powered byPixInsight

C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Comet /2021/S3 (Panstarrs) is approximately 218m kilometers from earth, shining at around mag 8, and visible in a small telescope. The density of the starfield around Cygnus along with many hydrogen emission clouds, makes this quite difficult to see, and even harder to process. This image with my newly acquired 183 Mono comprises just shy of 2 hours luminance data in the early hours, as this summer constellation achieved a reasonable altitude.

Processed in Siril with comet stacking for a starless image, which was then manipulated in Startools to push back the emissions and brighten the comet. The resulting image was combined with the starmask in Siril and processed to get a reasonable balance between the comet and the dense starfield. Rev B show the gently stretched stack from a basic mono processing, demonstrating how lost this comet is amidst the nebulosity and stars. I was fortunate that the comet was passing a 'hole' into deeper and darker space.

I was inspired to have a go after seeing @KiwiAstro excellent image from (well guess where).

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
    Original
  • C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
    B
  • C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray
    C

B

Title: The basic mono stack, cropped, binned with a simple histogram stretch

Description: Notice how dense the starfield is - the comet is just above centre

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Crop

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

C1/2021/S3 (Panstarrs) - a needle in a haystack, Tom Gray