Comet Lovejoy and M79 from Sydney

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #1 30-12-2014, 08:59 PM

Just about survived being ravaged by mozzies last night and took a bunch of subs following the C/2014Q2 Lovejoy last night. Needless to say, the city lights were making it more tricky than I'd hoped for

and if I'm honest I think my previous attempt was better!

Even so, there's a faint galaxy along for the ride, almost obscured by the tail. Anyone know what it is?

There's a strange mottling effect that I can't overcome, not only in the background but it even shows up in the comet glare in the crop. If I stretch the curve a little further the tail extension shows (faintly) out to the edge of field, and this scope has a FOV of about 3.7 degrees. Unfortunately, doing that makes the above effect just horrid.

Anyhow, here it is...full shot and crop, 10x 1m subs using a WO Zenithstar 71mm and Fujifilm X-E1.

Any tips gratefully received as always

okiscopey (Mike) · #2 31-12-2014, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

Even so, there's a faint galaxy along for the ride, almost obscured by the tail. Anyone know what it is?

It's NGC 1886

cometcatcher (Kevin) · #3 31-12-2014, 12:32 AM

Looks like a nice shot to me Dunk!

I did not capture the conjunction. There was a smear of high level cloud over everything along with some low cloud and by 9pm it was raining. I'm almost thankful though because I've been so tired lately and just didn't feel up to it.

raymo · #4 31-12-2014, 01:15 AM

It's just noise Dunk. If you download Neatimage [free], follow the instructions carefully, you should be able to reduce, or even possibly
remove the effect. Nice images BTW.
raymo

Cody (Cody) · #5 31-12-2014, 05:10 AM

Faaaaantastic. If I could do this, I would be a happy man.

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #6 31-12-2014, 11:27 AM

Thanks chaps!

I took a few 30 second subs too that I've yet to look at. They might have less smearing as I didn't spend much time on the polar alignment!

Will look into the noise situation further

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #7 31-12-2014, 02:36 PM

Here's 10x 30 second exposures, taken after the 1m ones... I think the source files are sharper with the lack of tracking issues from the mount and with half the amount of exposure time this was much easier to stretch to this point. It's noisy for sure...I haven't applied any noise reduction in post, but I'm liking it...it's no masterpiece, but this is new territory for me and it's definitely tricky!