These comet images are very difficult to process, since it's right after sunset and there's horrible gradients..
Trying to bring out the tail while still controlling the highlights is very difficult!
Yes I agree, I nearly cried when using registar to process the tiffs I produced from the RAW files. the stars were perfect but the skyline was everywhere
Hi again everyone..
Had another go this morning but again the smoke and haze hampered my views down low on the horizon. There`s a few bushfires that will burn for sometime on the coast here..
Was better viewing than the other night as could see the comet tail quiet a few degrees long visually.
Image taken with canon 300d 35mm lense for 60sec iso 800...procesed in Ps and noise reduction done..
Maybe tomorrow night shall be better?
Cheers Gary
By the way, very nice shots Houghy!!!
Fanstastic work everyone.
I especially like the realistic ones like Ashleys because that is exactly how it looks in the sky.
The "Roosters Tail" shots are special too.
An analogy would be that of a beautiful girl, without makeup and with makeup. I like the natural look.
I ran some images of the nucleus I took the other day through the LS Filter (Larson-Sekanina) in AstroArt to try and see what is buried in the coma.
I'm not sure how much is real or not and I have posted same to the comet-ml yahoo group and if there any wise words expounded then I'll advise...
I love the morning pics of the comet. Don't worry about the haze. I was up this morning trying to capture it, and I had to compete with lightning, racing clouds and strong winds. You view is pretty much what I saw in binoculars, but my photos came out very badly. Nikon F75 50mm 90 sec 200speed
My apologies for posting such a bad image. If anyone can advise me on what went wrong I would be very grateful
Bruce, it looks like its not in focus, did you have the lens set to infinity? Also, what aperture did you use? I think ISO 400 or 800 would have given a better result- you would record more stars and more tail, and you could use a shorter exposure so there would be less smearing of the tail and trailing of the stars. Of course tracking on the sky would help a lot, but if you just have a tripod you can always take several shorter exposures and add the scanned images together in image processing software to produce a better result.
It seems the focus is much worse on the left side of the image, so you may have suffered from some film buckle during your exposure- this can be a problem if it is very humid. Make sure you pull the film tight with the rewind lever before exposing.
I used a local streetlight to focus. I thought it was far enough away to be set to infinity. Perhaps it wasn't. The aperture was around F4-6 (certainly no more than that). Perhaps the buckle you mention was caused by the wind. The tripod seemed steady to me, though. But, it was strong enough to push me back, once or twice.
A week ago I didn't know anything about aperture, exposures etc.. It's been a fast-track learning curve.
Thanks, Mate! I appreciate your help
I would like to say how much I have enjoyed seeing everyone's pics. They are magnificent!
Finally a clear night in Brisbane, but very strong moonlight made it look very dim with naked eye (although it is still mag 3.0). Here is a very contrast stretched image at 10:01 UT Jan 31 comprising 5 x 30 second exposures @ ISO200 with 300D using a Sigma 17-70 lens at 24mm f3.2. I've also cropped the image to 35 degrees tall and you can see 47 Tucanae is in upper left corner. Still has a very long tail, but not visible visually due to moonlight.
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and I have posted same to the comet-ml yahoo group and if there any wise words expounded then I'll advise...
