Comet C/2012 K5 (LINEAR)

[rogerg]

Hi all,

I have now added this one to my nightly script too, and what do you know, we had two good clear night's in a row! almost unheard of recently.

Ideally I would position this comet more to one corner of the FOV, as there's no way the whole tail is going to fit in the FOV even then, let alone now in the centre. But doing that in a script isn't really possible so will see if I can manage a few manual photographs so that I can position it more nicely to one corner.

Here is last night's photograph of C/2012 K5 (LINEAR).
http://rogergroom.com/astro-photography/comet-photography/photographs-of-comet-c2012-k5-linear/

Thanks to Chris for pointing this one out to me.

Regards,
Roger.

[blink138]

wow thats really good roger!
was that just a single frame and cant you stack comet pix because of their speed?
i would really like to try this one roger how can i find it and how long was your exposure!
by the way it was really nice to have a few clear nights!
pat

[blink138]

ah just seen your previous thread on exposure time and stack
pat

[rogerg]

G’day Pat,

Good point, I didn’t include any exposure details on that! Sleepy this morning.

17 x 60 second exposures.

In these recent photographs I have not been tracking at the rate of the comet so am relying on the exposure time of 60 seconds being short enough to not exhibit noticeable trailing in the comet. I then align the frames in CCDSoft by clicking on the centroid of the comet nucleus. Once aligned I combine the frames normally and process the image.

TheSkyX provides the ability to track your mount at the rate of the comet, for specific mounts. I have the paramount ME and it works for that, and I know it works for some Celestron mounts, but I am not sure on the exact list. If your mount is one of them then you could do that.

Tracking at the rate of the comet becomes more important when the comet moves faster or you wanter deeper individual subframes. If I was sitting at the telescope at the time I would do it now, but it’s not something I can automate in my scripting so am having to just stick with Sidereal tracking rate.