Here is a quickie of 62P/Tsuchinshan.  Only 8 sub-images, but it went deep enough to pick up a few faint fuzzies.   The comet was predicted to be dim, so I was not expecting much from it.   My main target this night was another comet just a few degrees away, which is why I did not spend much time on this guy.   But, it looks promising and I might try for it again soon.

There is something weird about this stack, though.   Some sort of artifact, maybe?   It looks like two tails, but I can’t be sure.   Its more apparent in a negative view of the star-streaks image:

I also have a full-field, star-freeze view at 100% resolution.  It is more “pristine” than the other images with only minimal processing :

On this night, I drove out of the city to a semi-dark spot about 30 minutes away.  It was forecast to be very transparent, according to ClearkDarkSky.com.   Moonset was near 1:00 AM on Sunday morning, Oct 29, 2017, so I setup and took advantage of the dark time that was left and managed to shoot 3 comets before sunrise.

The first one was Comet Asassn.  I processed it and created an initial star-streaks version, since it is the easiest to do.  I still had a set of ISO 3200 sub-images to add in, but it looked fine to me with just the ISO 1600 data, so I left it as is.  Plus, the two data sets did not mesh well with so many stars and the differing exposure times.

For the star-freeze version, I did add in the ISO 3200 data, which was 36×180 sec.   Check it out:

Here is the full-field version of the above with a slightly different color balance and saturation level:

This is one of those early morning comets that are low to the horizon at dawn and very dim.   Consequently, 2 minute sub-images at ISO 200 barely picked it up from the Bortle Red Zone glow I was shooting in.

I could easily see two 11th magnitude galaxies nearby in the sub-images, but this guy was barely visible.   I think it is supposed to get brighter before too long.   I will try again for it if and when it does.

I tried for Comet Asassn and even with 60 subs, I did not get much.   The Canon 200mm F/2.8 lens was just too small of an image scale to do it justice.  Bortle Red Zone conditions did not help.  Plus, the parking lot lights from the nearby theater were still on for most of the imaging session.   When they go off at 2:30 am, I can see about a mag to a mag and a half dimmer stars in the sky.   I can do 5 minutes exposure instead of just 3 with them off and it makes a difference in the final outcome.

I made it out to my dark sky site again on Mother’s Day, 2017.  Mom’s house was on the way there, so I managed to visit with her before my imaging session, which worked out pretty well.

Comet Johnson was my only target on this evening.   I used my Canon T3 with no LP filter at ISO 3200 with 3 minute sub-images.   That was about max for this particular night in that area of the sky.   A few high clouds interrupted me after about 8 shots, but I was able to continue shooting after they moved on.

I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the ion tail with a single exposure, but no luck in that department.   The LP dome to my northeast that the comet was embedded in was the limiting factor here.   Maybe the LP filter would have let me use longer exposures and I might have been able to detect the ion tail like that.

The 3 minute subs let me track the stars with only minimal pseudo-nucleus smearing, but anything longer and I would have had to track the comet.   That makes it harder to do star-freeze processing if the stars are trailed, however.   I either have to fix the trailing in post-processing or shoot a set of star-tracked sub-images.

Here is another go at Comet Johnson from the city with my older Canon XS camera.  The light pollution was at a minimum with above average transparency and low humidity levels this night.   Still, being limited by the LP in exposure time made getting the ultra-dim ion tail and the full extent of the dust tail almost impossible.

I wanted to go to my dark sky location and shoot this, but the conditions were so iffy that I stayed in town.    Clouds plagued the area all afternoon and it was just before twilight ended that the skies became clear enough to image.   So, I probably could have done good away from the city, but the risk of it not clearing and wasting my time waiting for the clouds to leave was just too high.

Here is another Comet Johnson image from my Bortle red zone location.   I used my older, modified Canon XS camera and ISO 200.  I had read somewhere that ISO 200 on the XS series was close to unity gain and I wanted to see for myself how sensitive it was shooting in the red zone LP at this setting.

I went with 5 minute subs with tracking on the comet enabled and got 11 before moonrise.  I probably could have gone 8 minutes in these conditions with ISO 200 to hit mid-histogram, but I stuck with 5 minutes since the histogram hump was still well away from the left hand side.   Plus, it was about 70 degrees this night and the camera showed lots of hot pixels even using ISO 200.   It would have just gotten worse with longer subs.

The comet was at a low altitude starting out, so the LP and atmospheric extinction hindered me getting the really dim ion tail and the more subtle parts of the dust tail.   With moonrise coming so soon, I couldn’t wait until it got any higher, unfortunately.

It is not a great image but not too bad, either.   At least I tested the XS and verified what it can do.   It is more suited for shooting nebula, since it is a modified camera, but I haven’t used it in so long that I forgot how it performed on comets.

Comet 41P was the main target I was after for my imaging session on the night of Friday/Saturday, April 21/22, 2017.    It has gotten further away from Earth and is therefore smaller, but it is still relatively bright.   I wanted to get it before it gets any smaller and dimmer.

It is still in the northern skies and circumpolar and thus visible all night.  I still had to wait for it to get high enough and out of the combined LP domes of Abbeville and Lafayette, LA to the northeast.    Transparency was only so-so this night and the LP was really noticeable.  Very humid, too.   Temps were in the lower 70’s/high 60’s during the night, so the camera was on the warm side.  The seeing was pretty good this night, however.

I shot 2 dozen images (about 2hrs worth) and only had to throw away one.  My mount got stuck again while tracking and I had to shake it loose.  The image that was finished right afterwards was no good due to that.  I think the overhaul of my mount is long overdue.    Another project that I really need to get done.   lol

Here is Comet Johnson again from a relatively dark site.   I did not devote much time to it since it was not my primary target this night.   It is only a little over an hour of integration.   Perhaps it was a little too warm to use 5 minutes/ISO 1600 for exposures, at least with this low number of sub-images.  But, I didn’t want to have to shoot two sets of darks, so I stuck with one exposure length all night long.

The month of April 2017 is turning out to be really good for comets.  So far, 4 photogenic comets are all vying for my attention.  On the morning of April 8th, 2017, I got a chance to capture images of Comet PANSTARRS (C/2015 ER61) for the first time.   It was a short imaging session due to moonlight interference and the comet rising only high enough to image shortly before sunrise.

Too bad it was short, since I also wanted images of Comet Lovejoy.  It was just north of Comet PANSTARRS and I visually spotted it in 15×70’s binoculars.   But, by the time the sky and comets got right and the exposures looked good, it was already 5:17 AM.  Astronomical twilight was starting at about 5:30 AM.   So, most of my shots ended up having either moonlight interference or twilight interference.   Doh!   🙂

I could only get so much out of the two stacks I ended up with.  At least it was something.  I also tried out some new stuff and that was a plus.  An update to my planetarium pointing software allowed me to tell PHD2 Guiding to move the mount with the comet instead of the stars.   It worked somewhat.  At some points the tracking was only so-so and I had to throw out a couple of subs   But, I needed to try it to find that out.