The Canon kit lens that came with my camera sat unused for so long, I figured I should at least test it a bit for astro use. This is the second time I used it. But, no matter how hard I tried, the focus was never very good and I had to repair the misshapen stars in Photoshop.
Continuing to track the evolving tail structure of Comet Lovejoy Q2. Compare it to the image from the previous night and you might notice that it rotated into a “flatter” configuration with respect to the Earth instead of the tail actually changing shape that drastically.
Here’s the best image so far from my efforts to image C/2015 Q2 (Lovejoy). I was shooting it simultaneously with a 200mm telephoto that was mounted above the Televue TV-85 APO imaging refractor.
On Sunday, January 18, 2015, the skies were finally crystal clear. I used a 18-55mm Canon kit lens and shot Lovejoy Q2 with it. Not exactly the image scale I wanted, but I needed to test that lens anyway, since I’ve never used it before.
I did not have an LP filter for this and it shows. I went 2 minutes at F/5.6 and it was almost too much. With the Lumicon or IDAS filters I own, I could go 5 to 8 minutes easily.
Update: Improved Image
Here’s the shot I wanted to get the other day, but I missed it. On this night, I devoted more time to imaging with the 200mm telephoto than I did the TV-85, because I really wanted to see it with the telephoto. Unfortunately, my Bogen ball-head camera mount did not hold well with the camera oriented in a portrait mode to get the full length of the comet. I had to orient it landscape and that cut some of the tail off. But, at least I got a good portion of it with this arrangement.
It was very clear on this night at one point and Lovejoy had set, so I shot a few sub-images of Orion’s Belt to kill some time. Although the Lumicon Deep Sky filter lets me go deep, brighter stars have ghost reflections off the filter and I had to clone them out. There’s still a few remnants of them left.
Clouds and fog hindered my imaging session for the evening of Jan 16, 2015 (CST.) I had to throw out lots of sub-images for this and the stack ended up with a lot of noise because some subs with clouds got in regardless of my efforts.
Finally, after more than a week of solid clouds, the sky was clear enough to take some more images of Comet Lovejoy. Conditions were poor, however, with variable clouds and bad transparency. I made the most of it and shot some images with the TV-85 and also with my 200mm F/2.8 telephoto.
Very windy and cold conditions, but clear and transparent. Winds were gusting to 38 mph! I was setup behind my house which was blocking most of the wind for me. Unfortunately, the trees were blocking me from shooting the comet before the moon rose. I almost went to another spot, but with the wind so bad it would have been a disaster.
Lovejoy Q2 on Jan 7, 2015, 02:33 UT (Jan 6, 2015, 8:33 PM CST). 16×120 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3 DSLR (stock.)