After shooting Comet Lovejoy, I had just enough time to shoot 4 to 8 sub-images of Comet ISON. By that time, the sky was getting bright with the approaching sunrise and these images were all too blue. But, I decided to try and put together a display picture anyway since it had been since Nov 4th that I last shot some images of it.
I shot this right after shooting 18 sub-images of Comet ISON. Twilight was already approaching really fast and by the time I got 7 images taken, the sky was too blue to continue. So, this version is lightened up somewhat to bring out the faint details that I couldn’t get because I didn’t get enough sub-images. It shows the comet well enough, at least.
Below, I have included the star-streaks version:
I was experimenting with high ISO settings and short exposures for this impromptu imaging session of Comet ISON. I went with 1 minute at ISO 3200, which is equivalent to 4 minutes at ISO 800, the ISO setting I was using for most of my other ISON images. That is double what I was using before. Yes, its noisier, but tolerable in the cool 47 degree temps I had that morning.
Also, this is the full field of my imaging rig. The only cropping done was to remove places where the sub-images did not overlap. I wanted to demonstrate how large the comet is getting.
I shot comet ISON on the morning of November 3rd, 2013. I devoted most of the morning to Comet Lovejoy, but there was still enough time to get nearly 30 good sub-images of this object which is enough to make a pretty decent image. Clicking the picture brings up a half-of-full-size enlargement. Click here to see the image at the camera’s full resolution. The “star-streaks” version is below:
Comet Lovejoy is dominating the comet fiesta that is now occurring in our skies. It is the brightest and the biggest, by far! My most recent images show a 70 arc-minute tail that is best seen in the negative inset view.
A very small and dim comet in the early evening skies of Pegasus. A star streaks version of the image is below.
Continue reading Comet Brewington on November 2, 2013, 17:10 UT
Seven sub-images done quickly before twilight turned the sky too blue.
Friday, November 1st, 2013 was clear and cool. I was convinced that Saturday morning would be crystal clear and I could get some great shots of all the comets in the sky. Unfortunately, the sub-tropical jet stream intruded and brought with it high altitude clouds and ruined my plans to do my comet imaging.
I shot lots of subs for ISON, but deleted more than I kept because most had clouds in them. Some had tree branches and I kept them because I had nothing else. Consequently, the image quality suffered with the low number of sub-images and the gradients introduced by the tree branches in the pics. Oh, well…
BTW, the star-streaks version is below:
Comet Lovejoy with only 2 exposures – 1×120 @ ISO 800 and 1×71 sec @ ISO 800. Clouds were in all the other sub-images and were not really useable.
Here’s one I’ve been struggling with trying to get the noise down since conditions were very poor when I shot the sub-images for this. Compare mine to this one by Damian Peach shot less than 45 minutes later. 🙂
I have another image below that I initially posted. For the above image, I reprocessed it from the original stacks. But, I used a slightly different blending method (screen blending) for the comet and background star image to create the composite and lighten blending for the image below: