Hey guys,
I hope by now everyone figured out my blunder at the first part of the note about comet 21P G-Z being at it's brightest on Aug. 10, which should have stated Sep. 10 like it did at the end of the note.
I wasn't going to post any images of the comet that I took the other night just after midnight on the 16th, but I thought I'd go ahead and show you all what you're possibilities could be, because I know a lot of you guys can do a lot better.
The two images are both using the same set of 5-35 second exposures. I'm still tweaking my polar alignment after my telescope conversion project, and I'm not able to get too much past 30 sec. without really bad star distortion.
The image with the star trails was processed with Nebulosity and stacked on the comet.
The image where the stars appear to be more round was processed using Deep Sky Stacker using their comet function that stacks on the comet, which then merges it with the stars leaving them round.
There's going to be a couple of unique opportunities for some really cool images with this comet in the coming weeks. On Sept. 10, during it's closest approach, it'll be approx. 36 min. from the open cluster, M37. But, then on Sept. 15, it passes right thru the middle of M35. That should make for a very cool image with the blue stars of the cluster being overlaid by the green glow of the comet.
Let's hope for some good skies during that time.
Attachment(s):
21P-G-Z-8-16-18-5X35sec.jpg (516.2 KB)
21P-DSS-5X35_8-16-18.jpg (584.2 KB)