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Monday, June 11, 2012

 

Farewell Beautiful Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on June 9. The image is a stack of 5x120 second exposures, stretched in  FITS Liberator and stacked with  ImageJ then despeckled.Click to embiggen

Comet Garradd, after delighting us for months with it's beautiful double tails, is now sinking towards the horizon and is below the range of the iTelescopes travel. This image was taken before astronomical twilight, but soon it will be too low even for that.

While never getting brighter than magnitude 6,  Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd went through some beautiful regions, and its ever changing aspect was really delightful.

The comet will return in October at magnitude 12.4, but if you wish to remember this delightful little comet, you can browse the images I have here.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 2:15 pm 0 comments

Thursday, May 17, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd Near NGC 2683, 15 May, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on 15 May, 2012. To the right is the galaxy NGC 2683, near top centre is the faint galaxy IC 2421. Click to embiggen (its big but it's worth it).

Finally got a shot of comet Garradd near the galaxy NGC 2683. I have a bunch of other Garradd shots I have just not had time to process yet, but I thought this one was the priority to get done.

Technically, it is a stack of 4 x 120 second luminance exposures, stretched in FITSliberator and stacked in ImageJ, the stacked SUMMED, then a square root process, followed by despeckling. I thought it came our rather well.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:25 pm 0 comments

Sunday, April 22, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad April 17, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on April 17.

Stack of 5 images stretched in FITS liberator, then stacked in ImageJ,despeckled then cropped.

The ion tail visible in the image from the 11th is no longer well defined.

Along with flying solo while my beloved life partner swans around in the US teaching people how to teach people to survive bushfires (yes, you read that right) lousy weather has made imaging comet Garadd somewhat erratic (waves to Rolando Ligustri), plus EldestOne has used up all our high speed internet downloading games and whatnot, so downloading my images  c r a w l s  p a i n f u l ly.  Therefore, as well as my usual slackness backlog, I have a long imaging backlog and STEREO backlog.

Hopefully in the coming week I can get some more imaging processing done.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:42 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd April 11, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on April 11.

Single image stretched in FITS liberator and despeckled then cropped. Not my best image but cloud interfered. Even so you can still see the ion tail.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:50 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

 

The Amazing Disappearing Ion Tail of C/2009 P1 Garradd

Now you see it, now you don't. The ion tail of C/2009 P1 Garrad on 27 March (left image) virtually disappears on 28 March (right image). Images taken with iTelescope T14. There are the low resolution JPG images. I'm still flat out so haven't time to process the FITS images yet.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:29 pm 0 comments

Thursday, March 22, 2012

 

First Pass of Mosaic with C/2009 P1 Garradd and M81

This is my first attempt at a mosaic stretching from comet Garradd to M81, with lots of galactic goodness. This is done on the low resolution JPEG files, I'll work on the TIFF files when I have time.

Click to embiggen, it's worth it.

Images taken with iTelescope T14 and assembled in the GIMP.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:14 pm 0 comments

Sunday, March 18, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near NGC 4236-1 - March 15, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd and galaxy NGC 4236-1 taken on 15 March, 2012. This shot was taken with iTelescope T20. 5 x 120 second images stacked in ImageJ. Click to embiggen.

I am seriousy bad at this colour imagery business.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:31 pm 0 comments

Friday, March 16, 2012

 

Revised Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near NGC 4236-1 - March 14, 2012



A revisiting of my images from the 14th. Here I've used 8 x 120 second images (dumping two that were cloud affected) instead of 5, stretched with FITS liberator, and stacked then SUMMED with ImageJ, then despeckled using default settings. Click to embiggen.

The left image is the result of that process, and the right image had a square root transform applied to it. Compare with the result of stacking just 5 images here. Galaxy detail is better, comet definition cold be better. Compare it with Rolando Ligustri's image from the same night.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:48 pm 0 comments

Thursday, March 15, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near NGC 4236-1 - March 14, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near the galaxies NGC 4236-1 (the big obvious one), UGC 7490 (near top of image) and NGC 4250. The image is a stack of 5x120 second images taken with iTelescope T14.

Images were stacked in ImageJ, SUMMED, the given a light despeckle. Despite some slight cloud interference, this turned out very nicely.

Embiggen for full cometary and galactic goodness.

I have been grossly neglecting my C/2009 P1 images, I have a whole bunch, black and white and colour, archived ready to process. I just have to wait for a quiet time (Ha!)

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:08 pm 0 comments

Monday, March 05, 2012

 

A Different View of Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd as seen in the imager of STEREO H2A on 29 February.

After all those gorgeous images of comet Garradd, I thought I'd go for something different Garrad as seen from the H2A imager. Thanks to Comet Al who alerted me to this.

Scroll down for an animation.



Animation of comet C/2009 P1 Garradd as seen from the STEREO H2A imager.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:28 pm 0 comments

Sunday, March 04, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd in the Ursa Minor Dwarf - March 2, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 (left image) and T05 (Right image) on March 2 crossing the Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy. Stack of 5 images 120 sec each, stretched with FITS liberator and stacked then summed with imageJ (click to embiggen) with a light despeckle.

Not getting good image definitions on these runs. I'm doing something wrong , but what?

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:06 pm 0 comments

Saturday, March 03, 2012

 

Rolando Ligustri's C/2009 P1 Garradd Journey

To see Rolando Ligustri's remarkable documentation of the evolution of comet C/2009 P1, click here.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 3:51 pm 0 comments

Thursday, March 01, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near the Ursa Minor Dwarf - March 1, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on March 1 close to the Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy. Stack of 5 images 120 sec each, stretched with FITS liberator and stacked then summed with imageJ (click to embiggen) with a light despeckle.

There was a bit of light cloud about which made the images less clear than I hoped, you can't actually see the Ursa Minor Dwarf galaxy at all in this image. Maybe tomorrow night.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:58 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near NGC 6015 - February 26, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T14 on February 26 close to the Galaxy NGC 6015. Stack of 5 images 120 sec each, stretched with FITS liberator and stacked then summed with imageJ (click to embiggen, it's a bit big but worth it) with a light despeckle.

Comet Garradd is still going strong, on the 26th of February it passed this very nice little galaxy NGC 6015. You can see quite a bit of detail in the two tails, especially the one heading off to the bottom (I think this is the ion tail).

But there is more to come, on the 2nd of March it will pass across the face of the Ursa Minor Dwarf galaxy. Lets hope the skies stay clear for this encounter.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:45 am 3 comments

Sunday, February 19, 2012

 

Imaging comet C/2009 P1 Garradd and M92, February 3, 2012 (part 1)

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd imaged with iTelescope T4 on February 3 close to M92. Stack of 4 images 120 sec each, stretched with FITS liberator and stacked with imageJ (click to embiggen).

Yes, I know I promised, after putting up the low resolution spotter images, to put up the fully processed images of comet C/2008 Garrad when it passed close to the globular cluster M92.

Well, life happened, and I'm only just processing them now. Here is the first, a close up using T4. I'm not happy with it, and I think I'll have to go back and retry the stretch and stack. I'm doing something wrong somewhere (don't ask about my colour efforts).

I'll post links to other peoples images of Garradd later.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:43 pm 0 comments

Friday, February 03, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd near M92 - February 3, 2012

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd next to the globular cluster M92 (click to embigen).

These are just the preview images taken with iTelescope T4 and T 20 respectively. I've been remiss in blogging this fantastic comet/cluster pairing, but I've been organising graduate student lectures instead (missed out on two days of imaging because I was distracted by lecture preparation and didn't press the button to launch my observing run :-(.

Exhausted now, heading to bed, I'll do proper analysis on the FITS images tomorrow, after a long sleep.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:03 pm 0 comments

Monday, January 09, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd - G20, G14 January 5, 2012


Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad taken with the iTelescope T20 colour instrument and the T14 instrument in Mayhill New Mexico on 5 January. I took 3 x 300 second images for T20,and 5 x 120 second images for the T14 instrument. Left: T14 Images stretched individually in FITS Liberator with Arcsinh (Arcsinh x) and auto scaling. Stretched images then stacked on the comet using ImageJ, and the stack Summed using Z project. After that I did a square root process to clean up the background a bit. Top Right: T20 Images converted to RBG using ImageJ, stacked on the comet and the stack Summed using Z project. Click on images to embigen (you will need to to see the ion tail details, especially in colour.

The B&W T14 image stack turned out very nicely, with the ion tail clearly defined. The T20 colour image is muddy and shows poor detail (image cropped and rotated to matche the orientaion of the T14 instrument). I'm obviously doing SOMETHING wrong in processing, the JPEG preview thumbnails show the ion tail more clearly.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:25 am 0 comments

Saturday, January 07, 2012

 

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd - G20 January 4, 2012


Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad taken with the iTelescope T20 colour instrument in Mayhill New Mexico on 4 January. I took 2 x 300 second images, each panel is a separate treatment of the images. Top Left: Images converted to RBG using ImageJ, stacked on the comet and the stack Summed using Z project. Top Right: JPEG preview image. Click on images to embigen.

My attempt at a colour image using T20, as you can see, I suck badly at colour composition, the preview image is better than my processed ones. Everything I tried to make the images better only made them worse. Does this mean I have to purchase MaximimDL after all :-(

Roland Ligustri's shot from yesterday using the T20 colour instrument is here.

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# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:12 am 0 comments

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