Comet Neat

Hey Folks,

It's my first comet shot, taken with my 10" Newtonian SkyWatcher. Prime focus, at 5 minutes.



Question about tracking comets... Notice how my star trails are sort of stop and go? How does one get such nice star trails when guiding a comet? Is it the mount or my poor tracking ability? It was tough trying to keep the nucleus centered in the cross hairs. I'm using an HEQ6 stock mount and I use an Orion 120mm SkyViewPro Refractor for manual guiding. Sometimes the mount wouldn't respond as fast as I would like and I'm considering a number of different upgrades to the mount. Would autoguiding improve the trails? Should I have tracked on the stars instead? Any tips would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Paul Mikulecky
Lost Pencil Animation Studios Inc.
http://www.lostpencil.com

"The art of character animation is to try
to catch lightning in a bottle.... one volt
at a time." Brad Bird

Hi Paul,

Nice beginning shot. I've seen different methods...many seem to track the comet if they're imaging a smaller FOV like yours, which I think makes sense as the movement of the comet may be more detectable in the image. I personally like larger FOV comet shots, taken with fast telephotos (say f/3.5 and faster) and in this case I track the stars (but in most cases do not even manually guide, although this should be even better). I've attached a 4 minute shot and as you can see I've got some beginning trails as I only did rough polar alignment with tracking. I simply attached my Nikon F/Nikkor to an EQ-1 mount, turned on the RA motor and did very rough polar alignment using the SLR...this was the quickest/convenient method for me with my limited amount of equipment and limited time to capture the comet prior to sunrise.

Best,

--DJ

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