73P B Split Nucleus Movie April 23

I’ve added a short movie to my web page illustrating the rapid motion of 73P-B against the fixed star field. It comprises 7 six-minute frames during which time the comet moves 1.8 arc minutes.

Tips for comet movies:
1) Crop around comet to keep file size small
2) Align on stars, not comet, for smooth viewing
3) Use minimum bit depth and lots of compression to keep file size small
4) Throw out frames that do not follow a smooth comet motion

I emphasize small file size because of late I’ve seen comet movies of 10-20 MB file size that would look just as good at 100 kB and would attract more viewers.

Note: Mine is a dial-up-friendly movie. It is only 68 kB.

Movie and supporting data at
http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/new.htm

Thank you for visiting my site.

Clear skies,

Dennis Persyk
Igloo Observatory Home Page http://dpersyk.home.att.net
Hampshire, IL

Good Advice.

My comet movie is a lot larger, and it is composed of 60 frames of much shorter duration that yours.

(A full posting is down under Film and CCD images) To quote a part of it:
I used a Televue 85 on a G-11, guided on a star with an ST-4. Took 30 second pictures on the Canon 20D at ISO 1600. Used automatic dark frame noise reduction feature. Then I cropped to 640 x 480, and put the frames together in Windows Movie Maker. Total of 63 frames over an hour.

The movie is available at

http://users.adelphia.net/~alexmcconahay/SolarS/solarsindex.html
(it is 1.8 Meg, I believe)

Is anybody going to try to image this thing in a movie when it passes the Ring next Sunday night, I believe.....

Alex


Alex