Another galaxy with short exposure time. This one was only 22 degrees above the southern horizon at the Bortle 4 site south of Perry, LA. I had to boost the saturation quite a bit to get it this colorful, since the sub count was low. But, at least it was buried in there and not all zapped out like when I have to remove lots of LP.
My, my… what a difference a day makes.
I was hoping Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) would keep the show going, but it looks like the outburst it had for the past few days is over with, at least for the time being.
After Comet Leonard set, I was interested how another comet nearby would look, so shot 21 minutes worth of subs to take a peek:
It surprised me how well this came out with only 3 sub-images. I was at the observing site south of Perry, LA where it is a Bortle 4/4.5 zone, which helped quite a bit. It was the first time I have used my QHY183c astro camera with just a clear UV/IR filter, which showed me how sensitive and noise-free this camera really is.
Finally got some clear weather to image Comet Leonard again. It had been 20 days of clouds and poor conditions. A day or two before this night, it was announced that the comet was in outburst and had gotten significantly brighter. I was lucky to have the weather clear up just in time for me to catch it while it was still in outburst and displaying a dazzling tail!
Oh, here’s further work I did with those 15sec tripod mounted shots below. I was able to get 9 of the better ones to stack in IRIS and created this image showing the tail length better.
