The Moon, A Comet and A Star Cluster – Jan 28th, 2024

Comet 144P/Kushida. 15x180 sec, AT60ED, QHY294C, Antlia Triband filter.
Comet 144P/Kushida. 15×180 sec, AT60ED, QHY294C, Antlia Triband filter.
Comet 144P/Kushida. 15x180 sec, AT60ED, QHY294C, Antlia Triband filter. Star Freeze version.
Comet 144P/Kushida. 15×180 sec, AT60ED, QHY294C, Antlia Triband filter. Star Freeze version.

It was a clear Sunday evening on Jan 28th, 2024 and I had to do some tweaking to the scope, so I took advantage of the good weather and did some imaging to test the results.

After the tweaks and adjustments for the scope, I went straight to Comet 144P/Kushida, which was well placed in the early evening sky.   I took 45 minutes worth of subs and above are the two images I generated from this data.

M35 Open Cluster and NGC 2158, taken on Jan 28th, 2024. 40x180 sec, QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED, Antlia Triband filter.
M35 Open Cluster and NGC 2158, taken on Jan 28th, 2024.  40×180 sec, QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED, Antlia Triband filter.

I shot of few sub-images of M35 the last time I was out and wanted to return to it now that I tweaked the scope.   I got two hours of data on it and it came out reasonably well.

By the time I finished M35, the moon had risen high enough to drown out any dim nebulae and whatnot, so I shot the moon itself.   It was still rather low in the sky, but did not come out too bad:

The Moon on Jan 28, 2024. QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED, Antlia Triband filter.
The Moon on Jan 28, 2024. QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED, Antlia Triband filter.

I resized it 200% for this display image and did some sharpening with the AstraImage Maximum Entropy Deconvolution filter in PS.  Yes, not too bad at all for a 60mm scope.

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