Processing comet images taken with a DLSR

Comets Imaging 1 reply340 views
Tony Cook avatar
By way of introduction I am Tony Cook and I observed my first comet as a teenager in January 1974 - C/1973 E1 (Kahoutek). I imaged my first comet in 2004 and have been imaging comets ever since

I use a number of techniques to process comet images. You need a variety of techniques as comets have different sizes, brightness's  and speeds and this variation requires different approaches for isolating a moving comet from the starry background to get rid of stars that would end up as streaks.

I have written a tutorial on basic processing here - https://www.astrobin.com/151422/
A more advanced method for removing residual star streaks is explained here - https://www.astrobin.com/164855/E/

I also produce 3D images of comets - using the natural motion of the comet to get a virtual baseline for the 3D effect.

I have yet to produce a detailed tutorial on blending comet and backgrounds - other then to say the method I use is based on additive "screen" blending in Photoshop
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Pepe Chambó avatar
Tony, thanks for sharing your very useful techniques about combined stacking for comets.
I haven't been able do this work successfully yet, is something pending to me.