Well, here it is, the interstellar comet everyone was so worked up about. I didn’t see it as anything too special. It was small, dim and what I term, “a runt comet.” lol
Anyway, it was conveniently placed in the sky, so I took a look the day after it’s, “closest approach to Earth,” (nearly 180 million miles away.) Yes, it’s not too impressive at this scale. The guys with 10 inch or larger scopes had better luck with this little runt of a comet.
Here’s a collection of images taken of Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) in October 2025 through November 2025 . Most were taken with a new ZWO ASI2600MC Air Smart Camera, which I purchased right before Comet Lemmon was at its best. I hooked it to my Astro-Tech AT60EDP at F/5 . Two were taken with my Seestar S50 (third from the bottom and the bottom image.) One was with a Canon T3 and a 180mm F/4.5 Askar Astrograph lens (second from the bottom.)
This was perhaps the best comet since the 2024 apparition of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in October of 2024.
Some of the best images I took of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) during its apparition in Sep 2024 through Nov 2024. Cameras used included my Canon T3, a QHY294C and a Seestar S50 and various lenses and my Astro-Tech AT60EDP F/5 telescope.
Great transparency for this session, but very, very poor seeing. The guiding failed because it was so bad. Star were literally jumping from place to place in the guide camera view. So, I went unguided and had to dump more subs than I could afford. The comet was now setting over a more intense light dome than before at this location, too, which didn’t help. And then there’s all the darn satellites! Thanks a lot, Elon!
Since this was just about the end of the northern hemisphere’s time to catch the comet without twilight interference, I put together a montage of the best 12P images I managed to take while it was visible:
Too bad the weather didn’t cooperate in early March for me when the comet was higher in the sky. But, I’m glad it finally did clear up enough for me to get these before it was too late.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on March 29, 2024, 01:32 UT (8:32 PM local time.) 4 x 2 minutes, QHY294C, AT60EDP at F/5. SharpCap 4.1 for acquisition and Live-stacking. Exported as displayed and color corrected in PSCS3.
FINALLY! I managed to get out of town on the first clear night in quite some time and bag Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. It was only a few minutes worth before the comet sunk too low in the west soon after twilight ended. But, it was enough.
I normally don’t image during a full moon, but the weather was beautiful and I had a new telescope to do more testing with. Plus, there was a comet just begging me to take it’s picture. I couldn’t pass up the chance.
I ended up taking images both Saturday and Sunday nights. I tried to give lots of time to single objects and not jump around so much, for a change.
The comet was very low in the west at dusk. I had to quickly get shots and didn’t notice a building’s awning was in the shot along with street lights casting reflections from that direction. Clouds coming and going didn’t help, either.
But! This comet is bright enough to show up (with a tail!) that low in the muck of a Bortle 8-9 zone! That’s quite bright, by most comet imaging standards!
The Cone and the IC 446 Nebula area. It was well placed and I shot 4 hours for IC446 on one night and did a short run on the Cone next door the following night.
I always enjoy seeing M13 again after it emerges in the late winter morning skies high enough to get imagery. The colors got washed out with all the moonlight, unfortunately. I created a darker version with more color enhancement, but the washed out look remains:
Oh, well… I had fun taking it and processing it. 🙂
Here’s the very first stacked image taken with my new Astro-Tech AT60EDP. It’s a 60mm, F/5 Petzval telescope with 300mm focal length. This was 64×180 sec using the new scope. Location was a Bortle 8-9 zone with a bright moon out, 48F, clear and above average transparency. The second version is the full field.
Comet 62P/Tsuchinschan near the galaxies NGC 4608, NGC 4596. Also included are M58, M59, M60 and other faint galaxy fuzzies in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.
M4 Globular Cluster, Antares and friends in Scorpio. It was still the 1st light night for my new AT60EDP, but at 5:00 AM the next morning. This is 11 x 3 minutes with a QHY294C, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter from a Bortle 8-9 zone. Still noisy with only 33 minutes and there was some twilight, but I’m sure I’ll be able to add to it in time.
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.
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:
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.
On this night, I was mainly going to try making adjustments to the new tilt plate gizmo for the AT60ED and see if I could get further improvements to its field. Even though it was clear at first, the forecast was clouds coming in for a few hours, so I was not looking to take any keeper images and I wanted to get this testing done instead.
I had just completed star aligning and noticed a comet near Aldebaran in Taurus on the charts, which I had just used to sync the scope’s alignment with. It wasn’t listed by SkyHound’s Comet Chasing website, so I took a few images to see what it looked like and how bright it was. Only 15 minutes of exposure, so it’s not much, but it is what started the night.
I was really after the Comet 62P in Leo, and this runt comet was interesting, but I wanted to do more testing of the tilt plate thingy. I was going to come back to it, but clouds invaded and stayed until 11:00 PM or so. By that time, I still had about 2 hours for the comet in Leo to get to a good spot, so I took images of M81 and M82 to kill time.
I lost/missed focus for this dataset and the guiding for it was terrible. Plus, it wasn’t quite as clear as it needed to be from lingering clouds and moisture. I salvaged what I could. I only include it here to remind me to focus before each object if I want a keeper image and remind me it takes 3 SharpCap polar alignments and not just 2 to get good tracking.
Finally, 62P Tsuchinshan is high enough to image, so I star taking images of it. I realized the first few subs were not in focus, so I stopped and redid it. But otherwise, I was able to let it take pictures on its own while I caught a few winks. All in all, 68 images of it were taken or 3.4 hours worth:
Transparency was only average to slightly above at times for this night, so it wasn’t as clear as predictions. But, I did notice what the focus was doing and I now have a better handle on it. Plus, now that I know about it, I might have to try for more sub-images on that first comet and see what shakes out.