The Session-Story of Comet Leonard
I was looking for the Comet Leonard to come for several months. The passthrough of the comet on Messier 3 was noted in my calender. But it was cloudy that night.
My alarm clock woke me up each night around 3am to 4am to check the weather, especially the clouds. No luck at all and i ran out of time/days.
On december the 8th there was a promising weather report for the early morning hours of the next day in the 160km distanced Jülich, where i have a nice possiblility to take photos.
So, i had to organise some things:
- The spot to build up the equipment.
- A flexiday for the 9th.
- Load all the equipment into the car (for the 1st time).
The alarmclock rang at 3:00am, i drunk a coffee and started driving at about 3:20am.
At 5:30am the equipment was all build up and I started shooting. I still had a bit more then 1 hour untill sunrise.
Here the final Astrophoto in high resolution on Flickr:
Lessons Learned – Comet Leonard
The comet C2021 A1 Leonard was the 1st comet that I saw through my telescope. One thing i learned is: It’s worth the effort. I am really happy, that i did not waste my time with trying to be perfect this morning. It was important to get started and take photos without taking things too serious. Otherwise there was a risk to run out of time.
And one important thing i learned while trying to post process the material: Deep Sky Stacker got a mode to stack comets.
Same data – advanced processing
Technical overview
| Telescope | VIXEN ED80sf |
| Focal Length | 600mm |
| Aperture ratio | 7.5 |
| Erecting Lense | TSFlat2 |
| Filter | Optolong UV/IR Cut 2″ |
| Mount | Skywatcher HEQ-5 |
| Goto-Control | EKOS |
| Mount Control | INDI |
| Guiding Scope Focal Length | 162 mm |
| Guiding Camera Chip | 4.8mm x 3.6mm, 8bit |
| Guiding Camera Resolution | 1280×960 |
| Guiding Software | EKOS, INDI |
| Dithering | 3 pixel every 5th frame |
| Camera | CANON EOS M100(a) |
| Method | focal projection |
| Camera Control | EKOS, INDI, Gphoto2 |
| Photography Date | 12/09/2021 |
| Exposure-Time Lights | 78x30s |
| Sensitivity | ISO 800 |
| Calibrationframes | Flats, Bias |
| Processing Date | 12/09/2021 |
| Reprocessing Date | 12/17/2023 |
| Stacking, Integration | Deep Sky Stacker |
| Post Processing Software | Affinity Photo |
| Image Editing | Affinity Photo |
| Reprosessing Software | PixInsight |
| Capture Place | Linnich, Germany |
| Lightpollution | Bortle 4 |
| Scattered light | weak |
