Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Images

[PMSchu]

Hi Greg,

I have some images of C/2022 E3 (ZTF) taken with iTelescopes T14 & T19 on 2023 Jan 27. These are .fits images ~40MB each. How can I compress them to fit on the Forum? I tried using Astro Pixel Processor to convert the images to .jpg format but the image is dark. The stretched image looks terrible.

They're uploaded below.

Phil S.

[bigmasterdrago]

Phil, have you tried any of the online converters like imageconvert.org?

Or FITS Liberator -- https://esahubble.org/projects/fits_libe...nload_v30/

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Forgot to mention that FITS Liberator saves as a TIF.

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Not sure if this forum will allow you to provide a link to a service (DropBox, etc) where we can go fetch the image directly. That way, you can warn of size, etc and we can get the full detail.

[theskyhound]

Use whatever image processing software you are using to process your images (e.g. Pixinsight or Photoshop, etc.) and ask it to make your a jpg from your final image. Tiff images should work as well, although I haven't tried it.

[PMSchu]

Use whatever image processing software you are using to process your images (e.g. Pixinsight or Photoshop, etc.) and ask it to make your a jpg from your final image. Tiff images should work as well, although I haven't tried it.

I had Astro Pixel Processor convert the .fits image to a .jpg & the results are above. I guess I should read the directions.

The T14 luminance images show both tails. 

Phil S.

[PMSchu]

I did some more work on the images from T14. I should have used the tracking mode instead of the regular siderial tracking. Here's Luminance stack for 6 60 sec images (Bin x1).

   

Here's the LRGB stacking result for the Luminance + the Red (7 60 sec exposures (Bin x2)), Green (4 60 sec exposures (Bin x2)) and Blue (3 60 sec exposures (Bin x2)).

   

I really wish that I'd turned the tracking on  .

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

It still looks pretty nice!

I finally got images on T02 last night. I don't think that mount does comet tracking, and the preview image from my last try seems to agree with that assessment. So I went with a lot of 30s exposures. Its going to take me a bit to get it processed, but I'll share it here when I do.

[PMSchu]

I look forward to seeing them. I took some images of the comet during the full moon (ugly!) using T80. I set Tracking ON, but it didn't look like tracking was used. Perhaps that mount can't track either. The log file didn't contain any complaints about an incompatibility. It did complain about the proximity of the moon  .

Phil S.

[theskyhound]

I'll ask them for a list of mounts that can't track non-sidereally. At one point they had this info on their telescope description pages but it seems to have been lost.

[theskyhound]

I'll add that I attempted to discover if the mount for T02 tracked, but I was unable to find any information at all on it. Even Software Bisque seems to have decided it never existed.  Maybe there is a typo in the model number?

[theskyhound]

Here is my image of C/2022 E3 (ZTF) via iTelescope T02, a color camera, processed in Pixinsight. As you can see, I pretty much missed the party. Without orbit tracking on the mount I was forced to use 30s exposures, but in all it came out Ok.