After seeing Peter Ward's image of the comet I nearly decided not to bother posting mine, but here it is anyway
The tails are just visible.
This from 5th February 2013.
2 x 120 seconds @ ISO 12800. Canon 600D and Celestron CPC 925.
It looks like you've lost some detail in processing - the contrast looks too high. I think if you back off on the contrast it would look nicer and you would have a good chance of retaining more data in the outer regions and perhaps tail.
It's good that you posted it. Can't only post when we have a perfect image
Thank you for the advice Roger - processing is so tricky, and your work is great so you must have it down to a tee. So hard to know what to push to improve the image, think I do too much contrast too.
Thanks Larry and Roger.
Roger, yes I'm finding that the processing is very tricky. There are so many variables along the way.
This time I tried using RAW images from the camera and processing them with DSS 3.3.3. Fiddling with the image in DSS I find to be very tedious so I just saved it as a 16 bit TIFF. I loaded it then into GIMP but GIMP converts it to 8 bits. All I did there was made some changes in the Colours --> Levels area.
I confess I don't really understand all the fundamentals of what GIMP can do so I'm wandering around in the dark a bit.
Thanks Andrew and Liz. I understand what you mean by too much contrast. I was keen to see a nice dark background and perhaps I've lost some detail in doing so. I'll spend some more time fiddling.
Iso 12800 . I have never tried that high maybe I should though the image would have a lot of noise, but your image doesn't seem to have too much, interesting.
Orestis, yes ISO 12800 certainly has a lot of noise straight from the camera but I've done dark subtraction which removes a lot. Also, as Roger pointed out I've over contrasted it here so I've lost a lot of detail too. It's a tricky business
. I have never tried that high maybe I should though the image would have a lot of noise, but your image doesn't seem to have too much, interesting.
