Finally spotted the elusive Comet - C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS! Been looking for quite a while now so I was really pleased to have caught it on the hop as it begins to make its journey out of our region of space and out into the depths of the solar system. A ball of rock and ice that hurtles around the sun at many thousands of miles per hour, the comet gains speed and also gains a tail as it approaches our star. The heating by the sun causes the surface of the 'dirty snowball' to vaporise. It is this tail that represents most of what we can see from earth, around the much smaller nucleus.
I've recently been given a 200mm lens for my DSLR. It's not the correct fitting though, which means an adapter prevents the use of autofocus, so everyhing here is hastily done by hand - the cheapo astronomer's way!
The clouds were scudding in and out and I was convinced I was going to miss it, but in the end I spotted a gap. I couldn't see the comet with the naked eye but decided to snap around in the general area. Well, for once luck was with me and the small nucleus and fan-like tail turned up on the first shot!
I took a few more and disappeared swiftly. I had enough for a quick animation and a stacked still - now I'm ready to go back with the full setup (telescope and all) next time it's clear. At least now I know it's possible!
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| Comet C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS from Aberdovey on 26th March 2013. Approx 20 frames of 2 seconds at ISO 800 |
Besides the comet, I spent a little time whilst waiting for the sky to darken to collect a few images in order to animate the rising of the moon. Not a particularly skillful or well made effort, but I like it all the same. I varied the settings for many of the images used, so I won't bore with the details, but suffice it to say that as the animation goes on, the exposures get shorter. Enjoy!
Both of the animations were made with Windows Live Movie Maker, and the still image was stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.
So this is from a Canon 10d with adaptor ring to fixed focus M42 200mm lens?
ReplyDeleteHow many photographs are stacked up to get the image? In RAW? And then stacked up in layers with limited opacity?
Fascinating photograph. I have got it as my desktop at the moment, if that's OK.
Keep snapping.
Maurice
Hi Maurice!
ReplyDeleteThis is 20 images stacked in DeepSkyStacker. Just JPEGs, although I usually take RAWs but hadn't reset the camera after messing around with terrestrial images earlier in the day. As for the opacity etc that was all handled automatically in the software, although I twaeked the curves, luminance and saturation in the same program.
The adaptor I used was a temporary homebrew fix made from a lumb of plastic, a few bolts, an aluminium bar and a strip of velcro! I have however received a proper adaptor in the post today!
Yes feel free to use as a wallpaper on your desktop. Hopefully I'll get something a bit more impressive in the coming fortnight!
Could you see it? And if not, how did you know where to point your lens? How much did it move during the sequence of photographs?
ReplyDeleteHi Maurice,
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late reply.
No it wasn't visible to the naked eye, although the sky was fairly bright so maybe with a little more darkness it would have stood out. I only managed to spot it through trial and error really. I knew roughly where to look from my planetarium software, but other than that it was a case of taking an exposure and hoping to pick up the comet by serendipity, which of course I did. If Panstarrs moved while I was out, it wasn't discernible, at least to me. The exposures only cover a few minutes, so although the comet undoubtedly travelled hundreds if not thousands of kilometres in that time, it wasn't easy to see from the data.