1.
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang
2.
Comet C/2001 A2 LINEARComet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang (4.4.2002)
Place mouse pointer above the photo to see the
label. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang
+ M31, 4.4.2002 (18:44 - 19:02 UT)
Resolution: 46.20 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC2 with 50mm F2 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F2
Exposure: 50x20s (gain 35%), 49xDF, cooling (12V)
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 12.5° above horizon and only 8° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~3,
temperature 8.4°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 3.9
Comet distance from Earth: 0.5512AU (82.5 mil. km)This
was the first light of my newly modified camera (cooled SC2).
Darkframe contained absolutelly neither hot nor
warm pixel. Because of low altitude of comet
above horizon and city smog, I hardly saw M31 in
my 15x50 binocular.Comet was not visible by naked
eye. AVI file was captured and processed by K3CCDTools.
M32 is visible southwards from M31 and hint of M110
is north-westward from M31.
|
Comet C/2002 C1
Ikeya-Zhang (23.3.2002)
Place mouse pointer above the photo to see the
label. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
23.3.2002 (19:34 - 19:41 UT)
Resolution: 17.12 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC with 135mm F4 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F4
Exposure: 15x30s (gain 80%), 30xDF
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 12° above horizon and only 7° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~4.5,
temperature 2.5°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.0
Comet distance from Earth: 0.7284AU (109.0 mil. km)Comet
visible by naked eye. AVI file was captured and
processed by K3CCDTools
(with flat field used). Because of strong
processing hot pixels were not sufficiently
eliminated. Speck on CCD chip was still present,
but eliminated by using proper flat field.
|
|
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
23.3.2002 (18:44 -19:12 UT)
Resolution: 17.12 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC with 135mm F4 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F4
Exposure: 39x40s (gain 50%), 30xDF
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 9° above horizon and only 4° above "shinny"
block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~4.5,
temperature 4°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.0
Comet distance from Earth: 0.7282AU (111.6 mil. km)Low
position of comet above horizon, shining block of
flats and soft clouds caused, that the result
photo is worse than the above photo, although
longer exposure was used.
AVI file was captured and processed by K3CCDTools (with flat
field used).
|
|
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
23.3.2002 (18:33 UT)
Resolution: 17.12 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC with 135mm F4 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F4
Exposure: 4x20s (gain 80%), 30xDF
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 13° above horizon and only 8° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~4.5,
temperature 2.5°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.0
Comet distance from Earth: 0.7285AU (109.0 mil. km)Comet
visible by naked eye. AVI file was captured and
processed by K3CCDTools.
For the first time, the flat field was used in K3CCDTools.
Because of low number of frames (4), hot pixels
were not sufficiently eliminated.
|
Comet C/2002 C1
Ikeya-Zhang (22.3.2002)
|
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
22.3.2002 (19:02 -19:17 UT)
Resolution: 17.12 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC with 135mm F4 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F4
Exposure: 60x15s (gain 100%), 30xDF
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 7° above horizon and only 2° above "shinny"
block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~4.5,
temperature 4°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.0
Comet distance from Earth: 0.75AU (111.6 mil. km)Sun
was 23° below horizon. This was the first time,
when I saw the comet by naked eyes.
AVI file was captured and processed by K3CCDTools.
Unfortunately, some speck (on CCD chip) of
circular shape is visible in the right part of
picture (visible as dark circular spot).
|
|
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
22.3.2002 (19:20 -19:28 UT)
Resolution: 17.12 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC with 135mm F4 camera
objective (piggy back)
Result focal ratio: F4
Exposure: 60x8s (gain 100%), 30xDF
Seeing: windy, but clear skies. Comet was too low
(only 5.5° above horizon and only 0.5° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~4.5,
temperature 4°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.0
Comet distance from Earth: 0.75AU (111.6 mil. km) |
Comet C/2002 C1
Ikeya-Zhang (18.3.2002)
Click the image to see half resolution (3.14"/pixel)
photo or click here to see full
resolution (1.57"/pixel) photo. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
18.3.2002 (17:55 -18:16 UT)
Mosaic of 4 pictures
Resolution: 4.71 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR
Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian
Result focal ratio: F3.6
Exposure: 3 pictures - summing about 50x6s (gain
50%), 50xDF
1 picture -
summing about 20x6s (gain 50%), 50xDF
Seeing: quite good seeing, but comet was too low
(only 17° above horizon and only 12° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~3.0,
temperature ~9°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 4.1
Comet distance from Earth: 0.82AU (123.0 mil. km)Sun
was almost 13° below horizon. The comet was
easily visible in my 7x50 finder, but not visible
by naked eye (urban location :-().
AVI file was captured and processed by K3CCDTools. All frames
were aligned relative to comet. The stars trails
reveal proper motion of comet!
Summed image was postprocessed in K3CCDTools.
Vignetting on corners of frames was eliminated by
creating artificial flat field frame in Corel
PhotoPaint (by using radial fountain fill). The
flat field was applied to each of 4 frames of
mosaic (by using flat field frame as object with
'Hard Light' merge method). Brightness and color
of result frames were adjusted to create the
smooth mosaic. The mosaic is much more smooth
than the mosaic from 8.3.2002.
|
Comet C/2002 C1
Ikeya-Zhang (8.3.2002)
Click the image to see full resolution (1.57"/pixel)
photo. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
8.3.2002 (17:48 -17:56 UT)
Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR
Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian
Result focal ratio: F3.6
Exposure: summing 50x10s (gain 90%), 65xDF
Seeing: quite good seeing, but comet was too low
(only 14° above horizon and only 9° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~3.0,
temperature ~7°C
Supposed magnitude of comet: 5.1
Comet distance from Earth: 1.02AU (152.5 mil. km)Sun
was almost 15° below horizon. The comet was
visible in my 7x50 finder, but not visible by
naked eye (urban location :-().
AVI file was captured and processed by K3CCDTools. All frames
were aligned relative to comet. So during about 8
minutes of exposure the stars are visible. The
stars trails reveal proper motion of comet!
Summed image was postprocessed in K3CCDTools by
stretching histogram 1-100%, RGB balance and
gamma factor 2.50.
|
Click the
image to see full resolution (1.57"/pixel)
photo. |
The same summed image, but
another postprocessing in K3CCDTools:
Histogram streching 0-40%, RGB Balance, gamma 1.50.
This image is "more linear", because of
lower value of gamma. The comet's nucleus is more
overexposed (by stretching histogram top level to
40%), but details in tail are more visible, in
comparison with above picture. |
Click the
image to see full resolution (1.57"/pixel)
photo. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang
(tail area), 8.3.2002 (17:59 -18:04 UT)
Resolution: 3.14 arcsec/pixel
Camera: Vesta 675SC at prime focus with 0.60FR
Telescope: 8" F6 Orion Europa Newtonian
Result focal ratio: F3.6
Exposure: summing 28x10s (gain 90%), 65xDF
Seeing: quite good seeing, but comet was too low
(only 13° above horizon and only 8° above
"shinny" block of flats),
lim.magnitude for naked eye (near comet) ~3.0,
temperature ~7°C
Supposed magnitude of commet: 5.1Only 3
minutes after taking photo of comet's nucleus I
started to capture comet's tail area.
Interesting thing was alignment. As tail in AVI
frames was faint, the only available alignment
point were stars. So at first I aligned frames
relative to stars. Then I calculated length of
star trails in photo above (shift in x, y). The
shift I divided by number of frames. Then I
calculated the result shift for 28 frames of tail
area. I manually shifted these frames (all work
was done in K3CCDTools).
The result of summation was postprocessed in K3CCDTools
by stretching histogram 1-100%, RGB balance and
gamma factor 1.70 (the sky above block of flats
was brighter, so I could not afford to use gamma
2.50).
|
Click the
image to see full resolution (1.57"/pixel)
photo. |
Example of using stronger
histogram stretching (1-40%, gamma 1.00). This
picture is result of alignment relative to stars
(not to comet).
The glow in the upper left corner is probably
caused by glowing CCD amplifier (I have SC1
modified webcam, so far). |
Click the
image to see full resolution (1.57"/pixel)
photo. |
Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang,
8.3.2002 (17:48 -18:04 UT)
The mosaic from above photos.
It was interesting to "paste together"
two photos. At first I aligned frames according
to 2 stars (visible in the centre of mosaic).
Then I realised, that stars of the left frame
were captured later, than the stars of the right
frame, so they must be shifted to bottom right
concerning the stars trails of the right frame.
The result image was not retouched, to show the
real picture, as it was captured by webcam.
Brightness differences between frames are caused
by alternating light polution. |
Comet C/2001 A2 LINEAR (12.7.2001)
During my holiday I tried to get a photo of comet C/2001
A2 LINEAR. I recorded the sky near the comet with my SONY
Video8 camcorder to Video8 tape. When I returned home, I
captured the video from tape to computer and processed it
(with applying dark-frame) with my K3CCDTools
program. Here are results:
|
Comet C/2001 A2
LINEAR,
12.7.2001, 23:30 (21:30 UT)
Map generated with SkyMap Pro 7 Demo.
Click the map to see the map in 100% size. |
|
Integration of 1003 frames + histogram functions
with K3CCDTools. Hard
processed in Corel PhotoPaint. |
The same as on the left, but no processing in
Corel PhotoPaint |
The negative of the above photo.
Place mouse
pointer above the photo to see the labels. |
The negative of the above photo.
Place mouse
pointer above the photo to see the labels. |
Another processing of 1003 frames with K3CCDTools. The black
level was kept on zero value, so the sky
background is not black. No other processing. |
|
Back to Sky
Computer generated images,
real images, drawings and texts are property of the
author and may not be reproduced or used without
permission of author.
Last Update:
04.04.2002
|