C/2013 A1 visits 47 Tucana

[Kugelblitz (Marcus)]

A chance alignment between Comet Siding Spring and 47 Tucana coincided with a rare cloudless and relatively still Melbournian sky last night.

Unfortunately, suburban light pollution meant I didn't capture the cyan colour of the comet seen in other photos, but I'm glad I managed to capture what I did with my current set-up (no auto-guiding or field rotator).

Taken with the 8" Meade LX200-ACF at f/8, CCDT67 focal reducer and Nikon D3000.
No darks or bias, as the camera ran out of battery.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Nice shots Marcus.

The colour of this comet is very subtle. Takes a lot of "colour stretching" to bring it out.

[Kugelblitz (Marcus)]

Thanks Kevin.
I've tried stretching the image, but that ends up bringing out the skyglow along with any extra colours in the comet.

Here's another comet only image with some extra data that wasn't included in the original images.

[traveller (Bo)]

Looks great Marcus,
I was reviewing my data from 47 Tuc from last Sat and I think I got it as well. Will try and process a GIF from the frames in the next few days.
Did you capture more than one frame?
Bo

[Kugelblitz (Marcus)]

Cheers Bo

I took around 80 usable frames, though only half have 47 Tuc in them due to field rotation (alt-az mount, no equatorial wedge yet).
The final image is a composite of two stacks, one for the stars/cluster(s) and another for the comet.

Originally Posted by traveller

Will try and process a GIF from the frames in the next few days

I'd been thinking of making an animated video, but de-rotating the frames would be quite a pain.
Have to keep my eyes peeled for your gif.