Image of the day

Captured by
Terry Wood

Jupiter (clearer) Nov 5th 2023 w/Mewlon 180c

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Mars Pleiades Comet ZTF Multiple Clusters image

Mars Pleiades Comet ZTF Multiple Clusters

Contains: Extremely wide field
Acquisition Details
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Description

11 February Comet ZTF passes within a few degrees of Mars, and about 15 degrees of the Pleiades star cluster. This 22-deg wide field of view captures Mars at the upper left/left-center, star clusters upper left and lower left, Pleiades lower right, and Comet ZTF just to the lower left of Mars. 50mm Canon FD lens at f4 to ZWO ASI294MC Pro. SharpCap livestack for 8 minutes total exposure, 3-seconds per frame for 160 frames. To allow full field of view, the camera/lens was mounted on iOptron sky tracker pro mount for good tracking. SharpCap can livestack without any tracking, but a portion of the field gets cut off as the total exposure proceeds. Because I needed to maintain a 20+ degree field of view, tracking was employed. The one missing element was flat field acquisition to subract out the variable sky background at this Bortle 7 light polluted location in the midwest US. So, the overall image shows the effect of light pollution to the lower portion. Zoom in to 100% size to eliminate this effect and see the comet next to Mars, as well as the clusters/Pleiades.