Hello,
Here is an (almost)
2 hour animation of Comet 2007 E2 Lovejoy, discovered by CometGuy (Terry).
WARNING: 1.3Meg.
Equipment:
Vixen 102mm f9 refractor at prime focus on an EM200 mount.
SBIG ST7E CCD camera. FOV 26x17 arc min.
50 exposures of 2 minutes each.
Auto guided using a WO 66mm F6 and Orion Deep Space Star Shoot ccd.
Processing:
Images acquired in CCDSoft, Darks and Flats in MIRA AP, Aligned in CCDSoft, Batch processed and resampled down in Corel PhotoPaint, AVI in K3CCDTools, Animated gif in Advanced gif Animator.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia. 16th April 2007.
Start capture: 03:15am AEST (GMT+10)
End capture: 05:11am AEST (GMT+10)
Image centred at: RA: 19h 38m 52s. Dec: -13°50' 29".
Image scale: 2 arcsec/pixel
The animated gif is a little grainy due to:
- Thermal noise – I had to cut back on the cooling due to the ccd frosting up (the desiccant needs a bake).
- Thin clouds moving across the FOV during the imaging session.
- Raising the black point to allow for maximum compression.
- Rusty operator!
Cheers
Dennis