The Pleiades and C/2012 L2 (Linear). 40×15 sec @ ISO 800, Canon 200mm, F/2.8.
I struck out trying to image Comet Panstarrs on Sunday evening, March 24, 2013. It was just too short of a time to find it in bright twilight, bright moonlight and with its low altitude. However, I tried something to redeem myself while I still had the equipment setup. I shot the Pleiades with a bunch of 15 second unguided exposures. I managed to catch them and Comet C/2012 L2 (Linear) in the shot. This is cropped down quite a bit to just the cluster and comet.
By the way, the comet is in the lower right. Its that small greenish smudge. 🙂
It was predicted to be clear on March 20, 2013 when I took the above picture. However, a low bank of clouds moved in at the last moment and messed up my plans to shoot Comet Pan-STARRS with the Canon 200mm F/2.8 telephoto lens for a wide-angle view. The mount wasn’t tracking very well, either and I wasted quite a few shots because of that issue. So, the only good image of the comet came through a crack in the clouds.
This image of the comet was a lucky catch between cloud bands. There’s still some haze even in this shot, but you can see the comet and its tail well enough to make it worthwhile. I took a quite a few images, but most had clouds in it. The few that had the least clouds around the comet I copied just the comet and blended it in as a luminosity layer in PS.
So, the comet parts of 4 other 4-sec images, 15 other 2-sec images and a base 4-sec image is what I had and I did what I could to make it half-presentable. I could have totally scratched and not got anything, so I’m pretty happy with just this. Clouds are predicted for the next few days, so this might have been my last image of the comet until the moon is out of the sky.
Panstarrs – March 14, 2013. 40×4 & 1×6 @ ISO 1600. 400mm, F/5.6.
This was probably the last night without significant interference from the Moon for Comet Panstarrs. I took advantage of the exceptionally clear evening and decided that I’d give it another go before moonlight washes it out. This base image was in the second to last set I shot this evening and I decided it looked photogenic enough to post. I took 40 x 4 second sub-images and stacked them and then overlayed the results of that on the base image to create this final image.
The above image was generated with data from 40 sub-images, calibrated and stacked in IRIS. It shows the extent of the tail better with more time. Once the comet is out of the twilight, the true tail length will hopefully be visible.
Comet Pan-STARRS, March 13, 2013
This is the same data as the first picture but close-cropped and the background color gradients neutralized. I was hoping it would show maybe a smidgen more tail than the first image in this version.
A stack of 5 images helps bring out the tail better. I calibrated and processed these in IRIS with some dark data taken right after the imaging session.
Possibly the most photogenic part of Comet Panstarrs apparition occurred on March 12, 2013 and luckily, I had clear weather. I took a number of images, all with a Canon 200mm at F/2.8, a Canon XS (modified) and my little CG3 mount and a laptop. This particular image is a 2 second exposure at ISO 800.
I shot this at the start of the session, before the comet and the moon sank too deep into the murk. This is a one second exposure at ISO 200, Canon 200mm lens at F/2.8. Lots of twilight still, but dark enough to show a good portion of the comet’s tail.
Images of Comets, Nebulae, Galaxies and Star Clusters
