Instrument

12.5" RCOS @ ~ f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 1.28 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 1.28 and 2.70 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel, AstroDon Gen-2 filters.

Acquisition Data

4/18/2016  Chino Valley, AZ with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.   AOL guided

Exposure

RGB ratios are 1.00, 0.95, 1.05

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

• CCDBand-Aid to repair KAI-11000M vertical bars.

• CCDStack to calibrate all sub exposures.

• PixInsight processing includes registering, stacking, RGB creation, gradient removal and non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation.

• PhotoShop to combine the comet and star aligned images.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

North is to the top.

Comet C/2014 S2 (PanSTARRS) poses for a Messier moment in this telescopic snapshot from April 18. In fact it shares the 1.5 degree wide field-of-view with two well-known entries in the 18th century comet-hunting astronomer's famous catalog. Outward bound and sweeping through northern skies just below the Big Dipper, the fading visitor to the inner Solar System was about 18 light-minutes from our fair planet. Dusty, edge-on spiral galaxy Messier 108 (upper right) is more like 45 million light-years away. Astronomers expect the orbit of this comet PanSTARRS to return it to the inner Solar System around the year 4226.

Source: NASA APOD