C/2020 F8 SWAN 03 May 2020

[lazjen (Chris)]

I did my first ever comet imaging run this morning and as is the way with new things there's always a few things going wrong (some unrelated like my dome decided to go nuts and continually rotate; or Voyager stopping my guiding setup). It's a learning process. The PHD2 guiding did not seem to work as the comet moved across the images.

I'm too tired to do a proper full process with nice stars, etc, right now, but this is my test run process (using PI for CometAlignment, etc).

This is a LRGB combine, using 15 sec images at gain 200, -15C for the ASI1600MM-C. There were 31 subs per channel.



I'm hoping to have another go at this tonight. I'll try the PHD2 guiding again, but I think I'll switch to Unity gain (139) and 30 sec images.

[astronobob (Bob)]

Nice and smooth result there Chris.
I'm hoping to try with just a dslr and long lens,, can I ask what scope you used or focal length mainly ?
Cheers.

[h0ughy (David)]

Awesome result

[lazjen (Chris)]

Thanks Bob and David.

I used my Sharpstar 107PH, so at 700mm. I think a bit wider would be better overall. The comet took up most of the frame, so there was very little margin.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Very nice Chris.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Well, no attempt possible last night and it's looking less likely as the week passes, so this might be my one and only attempt at this comet for now.

Added to Astrobin: https://astrob.in/umb5iz/0/ with an extra version that pushes the histogram to show the tail more. Obviously I needed more/better data.

[CalvinKlein (Kelvin)]

That's a good result Chris. It seems to be a more difficult target than it should be. I had my third go this morning. Got up extra early, made sure mount, refractor and guidescope were all perfectly aligned. But SGP decided it wasnt going to show me the "frame and focus" window. No idea why. So had to abandon and do manual shots at the camera. Second problem was that part way through the shots the camera switched from RAW to JPG. Again, no idea how or why - never encountered that before. But worst of all I left my Bahtinov mask on the telescope ! I even managed to get PHD tracking the comet head perfectly. I got some nice star spikes I guess

[lazjen (Chris)]

Haha, indeed - they look like little resistors.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Looks good Chris be even better with some stars

[lazjen (Chris)]

Thanks Dunk. I have to take some images without the comet. I couldn't cleanly remove it to get a star field from the images I took. Maybe I was doing something wrong.