Comet C/2012 F6 Lemmon Animation 25/1/13

[Screwdriverone]

Hi all,

I was stuffing around last night with the new CLS 1.25" filter on the Atik 314L+ while the moon was up.

I tried stacking these 45 x 60 sec shots with DSS using comet and stars mode, but because of the total time, the stars slide all up the page and the colour washes out, as per the attached JPEG.

So, I decided to animate this instead, showing how fast it moves across the sky. After about the 6th image, I realised I could set the guidecam to 4sec images and guide off the comet itself. Stellarium showed it as relative magnitude of 10.5, so it was impressive to be able to guide off the comet using the webcam.

The link to the 640X480 (6Mb) animation is here (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzSlVJBCZUHU2Zjcmg5ajJJUW8/edit)

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Cheers

Chris

[Larryp]

Nice animation Chris! Certainly shows how fast it is moving.:thumbsup:

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Laurie,

Yes, it certainly scurries along with this narrow FOV.

Cheers

Chris

[peeb61]

Ripper Chris!
It is moving fast....

Paul

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Paul,

Yes, its screaming along in the close up FOV I get with my camera. I tried to guide on the stars but it blurred the comet as I am so close, so I thought an animation would be the best way to represent it over the 45 mins I captured it. The first few shots show some severe moon glow and some transient clouds, but these clear up later in the sequence, showing the nice coma of the comets green glow.

Cheers

Chris

[Nico13]

Hey Chris nice work, :thumbsup: good idea to guide on the comet itself with a great result.

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Ken,

Yes, 4 sec exposures seemed to help on the guide camera, however, PHD and the HEQ5 kept having conniptions, hence some crappy frames mixed in there.

All in all though, it seemed to come out OK. I just didnt enjoy having to debayer, flip, rotate and process 45 separate images before resizing them and creating an animation from them. It was slightly painful.....although now, I know how to create batch macros in Photoshop CS3, its much quicker than before. :)

Cheers

Chris

[Ric]

Great animation Chris

Very enjoyable.

[ourkind]

Very cool Chris! Love the animation :thumbsup: oh how I miss my mount..

[meade expert]

Very nice!:)

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Ric, I am glad you liked it :)



Cheers Carlos, the animation seems to be the only way to see it nicely, the stacking washes it all out, possibly because there is too many subs, I dunno. What happened to your mount?



Thanks M.E. :D

Cheers

Chris

[Poita]

Nice Chris.
I found the same thing, I think animation works better.
My one from last night is mostly animated clouds though, they only racked off when the sun started coming up.

[Poita]

Carlos, I have to come to Sydney soon to sort out my car, I'll drop the CGEM around.

[Screwdriverone]

Lol, bugger, those clouds decided to play nicely after a while, so I was happy.

Cheers

Chris

[Matt Wastell]

Wow - 45 minute animation - flying along - great movie!

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Matt,

Yep, over more than 60 secs, the comet nucleus starts to blur, so I thought I would go the other way and capture a bucket load of shorter ones.

Cheers

Chris

[rogerg]

Great little animation. You've got nice colour and a great FOV :)

[ourkind]

Re my mount I sold it in order to buy one with more loading capacity.

[Screwdriverone]

Thanks Roger :)



Oh, I see, hope you get a new one soon Carlos

Cheers

Chris

[astronobob]

Yep, I see the animation working now, Nice stuff Chris,
Animations was not selected in Internet options, dead set, Lol.

[Screwdriverone]

Cool Bob,

Glad you got it sorted out :-)

Cheers

Chris