Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) - monday 2 January
Another clear night in Melbourne, this time I tried to get away from the constant skyglow of Melbourne by shooting the comet over water. Unfortunately quite a strong breeze whipped up a bit of spray at the beach (Eastern View on the Great Ocean Road) which shows up as the loss of definition towards the horizon.
There are three pictures here, one taken at 11mm in portrait mode, another taken at 16mm, as close as I could get with this lens. The last picture is in landscape mode, the sun was just about to start rising, hence the sky has turned blue.
Although very difficult to spot visually, I could just make out the tail as it went through the Triangulum Australe constellation.
These pictures were very difficult to process, the two portrait pictures are a combination of about 60 individual 30 second exposures. The usual stacking program I had used did not like these images, I had to download and use another programme to register (align) the images (Registar), then had to stack them in tens, then stack these stacks. I have processed the images in Photoshop trying to bring as much detail out in both the comet and Milky Way.
The image to the right is about 30 minutes total exposure taken at 16mm. The difference in colour is probably a combination of processing them on different days and the lesser pollution gradient from a narrower field of view.
The image to the right is about 30 minutes total exposure taken at 11mm.
The last image is about 5 minutes total exposure taken as astronomical twilight was approaching.
