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Neat Q4 2004  (May 12, 2004; TU)

Images from the 2004 opposition


Machholz 2004 (December 12, 2004; 19:30 TU)

Canon 300D, 300 mm f5.6.

Machholz 2004 (January 07, 2005; 20:09 TU)

On the night of January 7-8th Machholz vlew by the Pleiades. Fighting against dew-point humidity I managed to get about one hour of useful time before the telescope drowned. Canon L 135 mm f2.0 35x1' at iso 400. Flat pre-processing in Iris. I prepared two different stacks by aligning the subexposures on the stars or on the comet to better show the details of the thin ion tail. The final composition has been obtained by blending the tail and the comet core originating from the comet-aligned stack with the other stack. The position of the tail and comet is the one attained at 20:09 TU. In the oginal image the tail can be detected for over 4°.

 


73P-C Schwassmann-Wachmann 2006

(April 24, 2004; 0:12 1:46 TU)

April and May 2006 have been dreadfully cloudy. This is the only half decent shot of this comet that, later on in May, flew by the ring nebula M57. Canon 350 D, Celestron 8 f6.3, 22x4' at iso 800. North of the comet head is visible the tiny face on spira NGC 6001. The bright stars south of the comet head is the variable R Coronae Borealis. The tail extend for at least 13'. The stack has been aligned on the comet head and median averaged (sigma median add in Iris) to remove the stars. The star field has been obtained by aligning on the stars. The two layers have been combined in Photoshop CS. The comet is in the position it occupied at the end of the exposure.

 


Holmes p17 2007

Comet p17 Holmes will be remebered for a long time as one of the weirdest thing evergrazing our sky.

 


Send anything that comes to mind to Gimmi Ratto gimmi@in.cnr.it

Copyright © 2004-7 by Gimmi Ratto. (November, 2007)