Comet Swan 03/05 (C/2020 F8 Swan)

[Retrograde]

Yet another Comet Swan taken from Bortle 7 skies here in Sydney.
60 x 30 second sub-exposures at ISO 800 with a Pentax K-5iis DSLR & through a Skywatcher MN190. Still struggling with the whole comet processing thing but have learned a lot in the last 24 hours.

*edit* - I've done a full repro as I wasn't happy with the original version & some artefacts due to gradient removal.

[Camelopardalis]

Plenty of tail there Pete :thumbsup:

I saw the triangular style head in mine too, good to see I wasn’t imagining it :lol:

[leon]

Excellent image Pete, hell of a long tail it has.

Leon

[anthony.tony]

Nice shot .Tony,

[astronobob]

Highly decent result, Pete, great look coma and plenty of tendrils in tail.
Quality stuff :thumbsup:

[Retrograde]

Hi all - I've uploaded a repro as I wasn't happy with some tail 'artefacts' caused by my (rather clumsy) efforts at gradient removal (gotta love Bortle 7 imaging :screwy:). There's still some gradient left (despite two cycles of gradient removal) but I'm now at least happy with the appearance of the tail. :thumbsup:



Thanks Dunk - interesting to see so many different renditions of the same comet.



Thanks Leon - yes indeed. Some of the widefield images show it just going on and on. :thumbsup:



Thanks Tony - appreciate it!



Thanks very much Bob. It took me two goes at processing but at least I've gotten something I'm reasonably happy with! :lol:

[Tulloch]

Excellent result Pete.

I'm hoping to get out Friday morning (only break in the clouds forecast down here), so I'm hoping for a few tips if you could pass them on.

Did you track the comet during the 30 minutes of subs, or let it move across the star field? In post processing, did you use a DSO stacker like DSS or a planetary stacker like AS!3?

I'm planning on using my Canon DSLR on a C9.25" at f6, but I'll only get one go at this I think.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks, Andrew

[Retrograde]

Thanks Andrew!

My subs were sidereal tracked but unguided (PHD wouldn't calibrate properly when I tried to start guiding despite the fact that I successfully completed a guiding test using a similar part of the sky less than 30 hours prior & left everything set up in between :screwy:). Due to the short window I had for imaging it, I decided not to waste any time fixing my guiding issue and as my sub lengths were short (30 secs) I figured I could get away with it. I ended up throwing away about a dozen of the worst subs in the end.
At your focal length I would probably use as short subs as possible (unless you decide to guide on the comet).

I processed the image using "comet mode" in Deep Sky Stacker. I did comet stacking (centred on the comet) with Kappa Sigma clipping which all but removed the trailed stars (I didn't have too many stars anyway due to the light pollution :rofl:). I then ran a second pass of DSS using standard stacking to keep the stars sharp and blended the two resulting images in Photoshop to create the final image.

There are many ways to approach this - I've seen some great results using Pixinsight (which I don't know how to use) so this is just one approach.
Good luck - wishing you clear weather!

[Tulloch]

Fantastic, thanks for the info. I've never tried a comet before, and didn't know DSS had a "comet" mode.

Andrew

[CalvinKlein]

Lovely result. The tail is well defined as is the coma in the head.

[Retrograde]

Thanks Kelvin!