Hello all,
I rarely post here, since I normally do DSO imaging, but this is a solar system object
Comet Pojmanski was discovered just this past January. It is making its way north, and is now visible in the pre-twilight morning hours. I just found this out last Thursday or Friday.
Last Saturday night was clear in our part of the world. I joined a friend at his dark sky site to finish gathering data on a couple of project images I'm working on. My primary objective for the evening was to gather some blue data for a couple of narrow-band images that I am working on where the targets turned out to have little to no O-III emissions. My friend had also indicated that he may want to use my camera for some additional emission-line information for one of his targets, but he ended up shooting other targets instead. As we discussed possible targets, he mentioned the supernova in M100, and then almost as an afterthought he brought up the comet.
This is the beginning of galaxy season, and I was hoping to use a hi-res setup for some close-ups of galaxies (I wanted to say "nice close-ups", but I never know how my data will turn out). But I wanted the blue data for my emission-line objects, and brought my wide-field setup instead (can't easily fit more than one scope in my car). I guess I ended up having the right equipment for the comet!
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/Comets/Pojmanski.jpg
This is a crop of the full frame. I've been trying to combine a nicely-combined comet image with one having untrailed stars, but so far I can't seem to get it done without the final result looking "fake" - the trails around the comet are still visible.
Given the excitement around the comet, I thought I'd share my first (and probably only) shot of this comet.
This is a median combine of 12 or so images. I was guiding on a star, but aligned on the comet's head during the combine, which resulted in the trailed stars. The median combine did a nice job of reducing the star trails but obviously did not eliminate them.
Hopefully I'll have a better version with untrailed stars posted. I just thought I'd share what it looked like on Sunday, Feb 26 at around 11AM UT.
Taken with was a Takahashi FS102 operating at around f/5.9 with a dedicated f/5.9 reducer. Camera is an SBIG STL-6303. The FOV of this combo is 105 by 158 arc-minutes (around 1-2/3 x 2.5 degrees, if my math is right, and based on Ron Wodaski's CCD calculator). With the framing I had, the comet stretched about 2/3 of the way along the chip's narrower frame. That makes the tail visible from this image around a degree or longer.
Enjoy,
Eric
I rarely post here, since I normally do DSO imaging, but this is a solar system object
Comet Pojmanski was discovered just this past January. It is making its way north, and is now visible in the pre-twilight morning hours. I just found this out last Thursday or Friday.
Last Saturday night was clear in our part of the world. I joined a friend at his dark sky site to finish gathering data on a couple of project images I'm working on. My primary objective for the evening was to gather some blue data for a couple of narrow-band images that I am working on where the targets turned out to have little to no O-III emissions. My friend had also indicated that he may want to use my camera for some additional emission-line information for one of his targets, but he ended up shooting other targets instead. As we discussed possible targets, he mentioned the supernova in M100, and then almost as an afterthought he brought up the comet.
This is the beginning of galaxy season, and I was hoping to use a hi-res setup for some close-ups of galaxies (I wanted to say "nice close-ups", but I never know how my data will turn out). But I wanted the blue data for my emission-line objects, and brought my wide-field setup instead (can't easily fit more than one scope in my car). I guess I ended up having the right equipment for the comet!
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.aunt/Comets/Pojmanski.jpg
This is a crop of the full frame. I've been trying to combine a nicely-combined comet image with one having untrailed stars, but so far I can't seem to get it done without the final result looking "fake" - the trails around the comet are still visible.
Given the excitement around the comet, I thought I'd share my first (and probably only) shot of this comet.
This is a median combine of 12 or so images. I was guiding on a star, but aligned on the comet's head during the combine, which resulted in the trailed stars. The median combine did a nice job of reducing the star trails but obviously did not eliminate them.
Hopefully I'll have a better version with untrailed stars posted. I just thought I'd share what it looked like on Sunday, Feb 26 at around 11AM UT.
Taken with was a Takahashi FS102 operating at around f/5.9 with a dedicated f/5.9 reducer. Camera is an SBIG STL-6303. The FOV of this combo is 105 by 158 arc-minutes (around 1-2/3 x 2.5 degrees, if my math is right, and based on Ron Wodaski's CCD calculator). With the framing I had, the comet stretched about 2/3 of the way along the chip's narrower frame. That makes the tail visible from this image around a degree or longer.
Enjoy,
Eric
