Comet C/20002 T7 Linear

02/16/04 & 2/22/04

Canon 10D & Orion ED80 Refractor

by Gary Honis

2/16/04:

Took some images of the comet as it was setting in the West from my backyard deck observatory. Images were taken with an Orion ED80 refractor that was was piggy-backed on a 10 inch Meade LX200. A few manual guide corrections were made for the short exposures using a 9mm reticle eyepiece in the LX200. Canon's REMOTE CAPTURE was used to acquire the images. Skies were slightly hazy and moderately light polluted. The ambient temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

Images were taken with a Televue 0.8X photo reducer / flattener for 480mm to 700mm refractors. The ED80 is 600mm and f/7.5

NEAT IMAGE was used for noise reduction.

Sum stack of 16 one minute and 2 two minute exposures at ISO 1600:

2/22/04:

Image of the comet was taken with the same setup as above but with a Celestron f/6.3 reducer instead of the Televue 0.8X reducer. The Celestron provides an f/4.7 focal ratio with the Orion ED80. Ambient temperature was 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Exposures were short so were not guide corrected. Comet was setting fast so only got a few exposures.

Normalized Average combine was used in Images Plus to stack of 9 one minute and 3 two minute exposures at ISO 1600:

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