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| Title: Beehive visitor - Photo by John Murphy - From left to right: King Cobra cluster (M67), Beehive cluster (M44) and Comet Neat (C/2001 Q4) 11:30PM 15th May 2004 Canon 300D SLR with 50mm F1.8 lens. Tracked but not guided. 11 x 30 second exposures F2.8 ISO 400 11 degrees centigrade Eleven of the best photos were stacked and processed in IRIS. The comet's motion relative to the stars was noticeable so the pictures were aligned using the comet nucleus. The signal to noise ratio was improved by creating an LRGB image - the blue and green channels were added together to create the luminosity channel. This was my first outing with an equatorial mount so getting a good polar alignment took me longer than I expected. By the time I was ready to take the photo the comet was becoming low in the sky. Fortunately the comet was still high enough for eleven of the photos to be useful. This is also the first time I have used IRIS. Photographed at dusk, low down in the west (in Cancer, by M44). IRIS was used to subtract the background sky (which looked bright orange on the original frames due to light pollution!). The blue ion tail is easily visible, but note also the small dust tail to the left of the nucleus. The brightest stars in M67 are almost resolved M44 makes a colourful backdrop to the comet | comet.jpg |
| Image | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| Resolution: 1269 x 1000 |
| Total images: 8 | Generated by JAlbum 7.0 & Chameleon | Help |