When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Peering into the dark with a camera
An assembled version of the imagery I took of comet C/2014 E2 Jacques. 24 x 4min exposures, stacked in Images Plus and final processed in Photoshop. While traces of the tails were visible, I was unable to preserve the faint signal in this processed color frame.
The tails are faint!
I have talked to a couple folks who have observed the comet in mid-sized telescopes, 14 and 24 inch, instruments. One thing they note is the absence of any visual tails on this otherwise bright comet. In processing the imagery from last night I can see the tails, but only in a very strong stretch of the data.
Below is an inverted version of mostly the green channel. Both the ion tail and dust tail are visible, but they are truly subtle. The ion tail is visible as a streak going to the right in the image, quite thin and straight, extending well over three degrees. The dust tail is visible as a wide are below the coma in this image.
Still working to properly the process the full image, the data looks very good so far.
A bright comet is always a good reason to drag the telescope out of the garage. In this case it is comet C/2014 E2 Jacques, currently about magnitude 7 in Cepheus. The comet is rising over the house about 9pm and available for shooting from my usual driveway setup location.
Setup went pretty smoothly, I have not changed anything in the basic configuration for a while. Shooting the Canon 6D on the TV-76mm scope. I did have some issues getting the autoguider to calibrate. The low magnification and high latitude meant the the calibration moves are just too small. Realizing that this also meant that any potential guide errors would also be small, I just shut the autoguider off. No guiding errors are visible in the four minute exposures.
Yes, the shot looks pretty bad… The frame is a quick process of a single sub-frame, just a white balance and curve adjustment in Photoshop. As I write this there are 13 completed exposures with another 17 to go. I do not think I will complete the sequence, I do need to go to bed sometime soon, I have to head to Hilo early tomorrow morning for a conference at Gemini.
Given a couple dozen good exposures I should be able to produce a much better image than is seen here. So far all of the sub-frames look good indeed, nice signal to noise, a bit of nebulae showing near the comet, and maybe a trace of the wispy ion tail. It will be a few days before I have a chance to properly process the image.
Starscape photography is becoming increasingly popular. Dramatic photographs of a starry sky over a scenic landscape. Properly done the results can be truly impressive. The photo is a beautiful landscape with a glorious display of bright stars overhead. For those who have long enjoyed the night such a photo captures a sense of being there, of standing beneath those brilliant stars. This is starscape photography, a relatively new type of photography made possible by improved photographic technology.
We will define starscape photography as shooting traditional landscape photographs with only starlight and skyglow for illumination. The exposure is fast enough to keep the stars from trailing. The result is a recording of what the scene would look like to a person standing under a starry sky.
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