On Sunday, January 18, 2015, the skies were finally crystal clear. I used a 18-55mm Canon kit lens and shot Lovejoy Q2 with it. Not exactly the image scale I wanted, but I needed to test that lens anyway, since I’ve never used it before.
I did not have an LP filter for this and it shows. I went 2 minutes at F/5.6 and it was almost too much. With the Lumicon or IDAS filters I own, I could go 5 to 8 minutes easily.
Update: Improved Image
Here’s the shot I wanted to get the other day, but I missed it. On this night, I devoted more time to imaging with the 200mm telephoto than I did the TV-85, because I really wanted to see it with the telephoto. Unfortunately, my Bogen ball-head camera mount did not hold well with the camera oriented in a portrait mode to get the full length of the comet. I had to orient it landscape and that cut some of the tail off. But, at least I got a good portion of it with this arrangement.
It was very clear on this night at one point and Lovejoy had set, so I shot a few sub-images of Orion’s Belt to kill some time. Although the Lumicon Deep Sky filter lets me go deep, brighter stars have ghost reflections off the filter and I had to clone them out. There’s still a few remnants of them left.
Clouds and fog hindered my imaging session for the evening of Jan 16, 2015 (CST.) I had to throw out lots of sub-images for this and the stack ended up with a lot of noise because some subs with clouds got in regardless of my efforts.
Finally, after more than a week of solid clouds, the sky was clear enough to take some more images of Comet Lovejoy. Conditions were poor, however, with variable clouds and bad transparency. I made the most of it and shot some images with the TV-85 and also with my 200mm F/2.8 telephoto.
Very windy and cold conditions, but clear and transparent. Winds were gusting to 38 mph! I was setup behind my house which was blocking most of the wind for me. Unfortunately, the trees were blocking me from shooting the comet before the moon rose. I almost went to another spot, but with the wind so bad it would have been a disaster.
Lovejoy Q2 on Jan 7, 2015, 02:33 UT (Jan 6, 2015, 8:33 PM CST). 16×120 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3 DSLR (stock.)
A quickie processing job on data taken on Jan 6, 2015 at 02:53 UT (Jan 5, 8:53 pm CST.) This is 36×45 sec ISO 1600 sub-images taken with a Televue TV-85 at F/5.6 and a stock Canon T3 with no LPS filters in the image train.
A very bright moon was out while taking these shots, but it still shows a nice tail. Just think how good it will be when there is no moonlight to hinder the view!
Edit: This image appears at the Federalist online news site in a story about the comet and is available by clicking here: Catch A Comet! Lovejoy Is Lighting Up The Skies
