Comet Lovejoy rising from behind the trees in my backyard.
Comet Lovejoy composite image taken with a Canon 200mm telephoto lens. I shot 40×30 sec sub-images at ISO 3200 and stacked them. The first image of the set was used as the background base image. I then took the stack of subs and combined them with the base to show the tail better. To me, this shows how the comet sort of looked in binoculars as it was rising from behind the trees.
I also did a star-streaks stack that shows the extent of the tail better than the image above. I did very little post-processing on it, since that just took away from the raw feel of the image:
Comet Lovejoy on Nov 30th, 2013 – Star Streaks version.
C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy), Nov 29, 2013. 40×15 sec @ ISO 3200, Canon 200mm at F/2.8, IDAS-LPS, Lumicon Deep Sky, modified Canon T3 DSLR.
With all the hype about Comet ISON going on over the past 2 days, we still have a very nice comet to look at that is putting on just as good a show – Comet Lovejoy. Here’s how it looked the morning after Thanksgiving Day with a 200mm F/2.8 telephoto lens mounted on a simple equatorial tracking mount. I used 2 light pollution filters for this since I had to shoot towards a very bright LP dome from a metropolitan area to my northeast. It was a test and it seems to have worked beautifully. Next time, I’ll try this with the camera on my bigger mount and track the comet with much longer exposures.
C/2012 S1, 11-20-13. 12×20 sec @ ISO 400 & 27×15 sec @ ISO 800, Canon 200mm F/2.8, modified Canon T3.
Here’s about 10.75 minutes worth of sub-images stacked to show the extent of Comet ISON’s tail. Mount troubles and twilight limited my exposures, but at least I didn’t scratch. Probably the last image pre-perihelion, since the weather will not be good for imaging again until next week and ISON will be too low to see by that time.
ISON Rising – Nov 14, 2013. 30 sec each @ ISO 1600, Canon 200mm F/2.8, modified Canon T3.
This morning (Thursday, Nov 14, 2013) I observed ISON and imaged it. Boy, what a difference from yesterdays observations. It has shot up immensely in brightness since yesterday and is now naked eye. Its so bright you can see an intense teal-green color in binoculars.
I managed to get about 28×30 sec images of the comet rising from behind the trees in my backyard. I combined most of them into an animated GIF image above. It shows the comet from about the start of astronomical twilight until the sky got too bright and the comet was moving back into some tree branches (about 5:11 A.M. local time until 5:33 A.M. local time.)
Comet ISON and a meteor, Nov 14, 2013.
My image above is a composite of a single 30 second sub-frame for the background with an 18×30 sec stack of the comet blended in. I was using a Canon 200mm F/2.8 lens and had the camera (a modified Canon T3) by itself on a CG3 clone mount with a rudimentary clock drive. There was no guiding.
BTW, the sub-image with the meteor is presently being used by Sky & Telescope on their website for a couple of stories on Comet ISON:
Comet Lovejoy with a Canon 200mm, F/2.8 telephoto. 19×30 sec @ ISO 1600, IDAS-LPS, modified Canon T3.
High altitude clouds from the subtropical jet stream barely gave me a break to image Lovejoy on the morning of November 14, 2013. I was shooting most of the sub-images through the clouds and consequently, didn’t go as deep as I had planned. I had to throw out more than half of the sub-images, unfortunately.
Images of Comets, Nebulae, Galaxies and Star Clusters
