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2004 May
07.36 NEAT passes M47
(centre left) and M46 (bottom left). 3 minute exposure (it was
moving fast). Full-res
image cropped, 3.5 degrees high, W at top. Note the long ion tail and
broad diffuse dust tail. Log scaled to avoid buring out the area
near the coma (although still had to stretch it to bring out the
tail). Visually, the tail's surface brightness has faded
dramatically in the last few days although about 3 degrees was still
visible in 7x50s from my light polluted backyard (before moonrise). The
coma no longer looks elongated to the naked eye.
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2004 April
25.4 NEAT passes
the LMC. 12 panel mosaic taken from my suburban backyard with a
36% sunlit moon in the sky. Each panel is a stacked 5 minute exposure,
3.7 x 5.6 degrees, taken at full resolution. Panels were gradient
corrected and arranged into a mosaic using the astrometric plate
solution for the central panel. Resampled to 33% to make it manageable
during image enahancement and finally resampled again to 1280 x 845.
Saved with 85% compression. Watch out, it's still a big image (250K)!
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2004 April
21.38 45 minute exposure
(91x30 sec) under hazy conditions.
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2004 April
18.38 32 minute exposure (64
x 30sec)
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2004 April
13.39 15 min exposure (30 x 30sec).
Better conditions than the previous night, but comet is still low (27
degrees) in a light polluted part of my suburban sky. Field is 4
degrees wide, N at left. Brightest star is 4th mag delta
Hydri. Lower image is a 62 minute stack (124 x 30 sec) using
extra images taken at lower altitude (and with more agressive gradient
removal).
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2004 April 12.43 15
minute exposure (30 x 30sec) under hazy / partly cloudy conditions.
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2004 April 08.40 22 min
exposure (22 x
60sec), N at left. Image has been cropped to approx 5 x 2
degrees.
Right hand image has more extreme enhacement. Tail is about 4.5 degrees
long. |
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2004 March 26.41
6x60 sec, N at left, E at bottom. This is a
low-res image (binned 3x3) to increase sensitivity. Image has been
heavily processed to remove a strong light pollution gradient. Comet
altitude: 23 degrees. Right hand image has extreme enhancement to
show the ion tail. The short dust tail
extends toward 6 o'clock and the ion tail is visible for at least 2.5
degrees.
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