Images below were taken unguided with a modified Digital Rebel through Orion ED80 Refractor with Televue .80X Reducer. The ED80 was piggybacked on a Meade 10 inch LX200. A Baader UV/IR filter was used. All exposures were for two minutes and at ISO 1600. Images Plus, Photoshop and NEAT Image Pro were used for image processing.
Comet Swan - Image:
19 two-minute exposures were combined in Images Plus using Adaptive Addition with alignment centered on the comet nucleus:
To avoid star trails for the image below, I used a Normalized Median combine in Images Plus of 19 two-minute exposures with alignment centered on the comet nucleus:
For processing this image I used Images Plus Normalized Median to combine 19 two-minute exposures with alignment centered on the comet nucleus. For the static starfield, I then layered that image with a Sigma Clip Median combine of 12 two-minute exposures with alignment centered on the starfield.
I made an animation of the comet using the two-minute exposures taken over a 3 hour 22 minute period (between 7:38 pm and 11:00 pm) until the comet set behind trees. During this period there were many jet and satellite passes. The cropped center portion of the images taken was used for the animated GIF which was reduced in size for web display and is 5 Meg in size; it may take awhile to load:
Comet Swan - Animation: (large file)
CLICK HERE for an image and animation of Comet Swan on October 21, 2006.
CLICK HERE for an image of Comet Swan on October 29, 2006.
CLICK HERE for an image and animation of Comet Swan on October 15, 2006.
For detailed directions for converting a Canon Digital Rebel for infrared and astro imaging CLICK HERE.
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Astro Imaging with Canon Digital Rebel XT Camera