Yes, although it made the Grand Canyon visible.
Sweet. Great foreground as well. Was cloudy in Utah tonight. Hoped to get a shot against a darker sky, but clouds came up and blocked it before it got fully dark.
This was my last decent shot. Canon 6D at 200mm and f2.8. 1.3s at ISO 2500. I find that is about as long of an exposure as I can go before the star trails get bad. Agree to increase the ISO rather than the exposure unless you have some kind of tracking mount.
Also took a series of shots early to try to stack, but too tired to do that part tonight.
Really nice! I like the clouds - make it seem more “real”.
On our way home, and I’ll have to see what I have once I get the pictures off my camera and process them, but I think I got some good shots. I only used my ancient ƒ/1.4 50mm, wide open, with a wide range of shutter speeds and ISO settings.
Nikon D3200, with my ancient (c. 1972) 50mm ƒ/1.4 NIKKOR-S lens. Eight seconds at ƒ/1.4, ISO 200.
Not only did I get the comet; I got a couple of meteors as well, and an aircraft.
The meteors show up rather well, above and left of the comet. The aircraft is more subtle, toward the left edge of the image, about level vertically with the head of the comet; a reddish streak with evenly-spaced brighter spots, as a result of the flashing light on the aircraft.
That image appears to have been reversed (like most pics on the internet these days !) !
Also, I can see at least 3 meteors !
Nice pic !
I’ve tried to see the comet a couple of times but too cloudy here, and the forecast
doesn’t look promising.
Good shot. I think those are satellites rather than meteors. They stay the same brightness throughout the exposure where meteors tend to vary.
Very nice shot!
For comparison, stacked my series of images. Makes for a smooth comet and stars, but the clouds get fuzzy as they move between images.
Exposure details for the two images. Went to longer exposure as it got darker.
I decided to try again tonight, from my front yard.
The skyglow is insane, but with a stack of 10 images, and some heavy-handed processing, I was able to get this:
My last comet photo.
It’s now so faint that it can’t be see unaided in the city.
I drove north to get away from some of the skyglow, but the Moon is almost full, and so it’s all downhill from here. I did take the time to try out my cobbled-together equatorial tracker, which allowed a 30 second exposure:
As we all were. And then Halley’s came in the 1980s and really drove home the lesson of not expecting too much of these events.
At least Hale-Bopp and Hayakutake made up for those.
I know this comet is done, but for future reference Sequator is another good option for stacking. Sequator is completely free to download and use; it’s fast, and it’s simple to use. It also runs well without calibration frames*–in my experience it actually runs better without then although perhaps not with objects I’ve never tried to image, like highly magnified planets or faint deep sky objects like nebulae. Sequator also typically produces an output image which is immediately presentable, although I usually like to make further adjustments to mine.
Another option is Astro Pixel Processor, which you have to pay for, either by annual lease or a lifetime license. I have used that as well as Sequator and I have yet to find out how or why it’s better than Sequator. It’s about as complicated as a B747 control panel, slower than molasses, and the initially resulting stacked image is badly vignetted. I bought a lifetime license anyhow on the basis that it’s good to have something that you’re officially entitled to access, because it gives you a fallback in case the free app disappears.
*Calibration frames: Additional shots that you take, usually with the lens covered and at the same ISO and f-number as your image files (“lights”). There are various kinds of calibration frames in which the other settings may vary from your lights, e.g. exposure time.
I think those are “Darks.”
They are used to remove the small amount of data that is present due to thermal effects.
“Lights” are shot with a uniform light source, so that the vignetting of the lens can be compensated for.
“Siril” is another free stacking tool, but it also looks extremely complicated. I downloaded it, but haven’t tried it.
This seems like a reasonably miscellaneous and personal thing.
Single shot made with a 50mm lens at f/2.2, ISO 3200, 3 second exposure:
As a result of the high ISO, long exposure, and low f-number, the sky appears much brighter than it really was.
The image below is probably a little closer to the true level of darkness, or what would have been that if the western sky wasn’t still so bright, and if I’d gone somewhere out in the country instead of taking it from my driveway. This one comprises nine separate images that were stacked, cropped, and further processed in Photoshop.
I actually like the first one better, but this one does show the anti-tail, i.e. the faint spike-like protrusion pointing down and to the right, opposite the tail.
Nice. I tried seeing it on 3 different nights here, but too much light pollution near the horizon.
Nor did I actually see it with my unaided eyes. I might have, if I’d wanted to struggle, but fortunately I was more interested in getting the shots–as usual. Using the settings I described, I easily found the the comet in my live view monitor.
I wasn’t too disappointed by not being able to see it, I’m too spoiled by memories of Hale-Bopp. (If only I had had a good digital camera then!)
Very nice!
There’s an existing thread I started here:
I should have checked, dammit!
I’ll ask the mods if they can merge this thread with the one you started.