Movement of C/2022 E3 (ZTF) in 60min

[H-Alpha]

Hi all,

I hope you are well.

This is the first comet that I try to capture and right now I think I am having the best captures so far. I tried the last two nights but in the beginning of the month we had bad weather here... Anyway, I do not have yet PixInsight and Deep Sky Stacker does not want to collaborate for comet stacking... It always stack on the stars despite what it should do. I may buy PiInsight at the end... and hope I will manage to produce a nice photo, although my sky has quite some light pollution.

Two nights ago, I did something easy. I wanted to capture the movement of the comet and I was really surprised how fast it moves!!! Wow!!!
Below is the result, but still, the alignment of the captures is not perfect... I tried to do it with ImPPG and the result is below. I tried with PIPP and this was not different. Have you any idea how to correctly align the captures?

And here is the result of movement in just 60 minutes! Amazing, isn't it?

2023-02-09, C-2022 E3 ZTF, 60 min animation, Lunt130MT, ASI1600, Red filter, 23-22-38 UTC by H- Alpha, on Flickr

Best wishes,
Alexandros

[KMH]

It's a fast-mover for sure!
My success with Deep Sky Stacker for comets has been very erratic over the years (not that I have a huge amount of experience). With E3ZTF I've gotten some semi-decent results using Kappa-Sigma or Weighted Average for the light frames, and Mean for the darks. But mostly I just stack in comet-only mode and put up with the star trails. It seems to do pretty well with that, especially with Weighted Average.
We bought PixInsight a few years ago and were a bit put off by the very steep learning curve and lack of documentation (especially for something that expensive). But for E3 my wife has made a real effort to learn the comet stacking. It's very complicated and time-consuming to optimize, but she found some good Youtube tutorials and has had some very good success so far. The results are definitely better than I got with DSS+Photoshop. I do think that ultimately PI will be worth the expense and effort once the basics are mastered. But, again, that is not a quick or easy process.

Kevin

ps - You probably know this but for DSS be sure to identify the location of the comet on the first and last frames, and the reference frame (the one with the highest score after registration). If you don't it will not present comet stacking as an option.

[Montana]

This is quite remarkable!!

I think I have more light pollution than you as I am even struggling to see the comet in my pictures. I have been using DSS and I have no idea how you mark the comet on the reference frames, how do you stop it mid processing? it all happens very fast. I click register images, then make sure around 100 stars are picked for alignment them press go and it all seems to do everything by default. I then have huge difficulty processing the final image. I have found that a freeware program called GraXpert does a good job at automatic stretch and colour balance, but I cannot get it to remove my light pollution and get a black sky

Here are my two pathetic attempts
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandra4/52686531582/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandra ... otostream/

Alexandra

[KMH]

Alexandra,

Those are lovely pictures! I especially like the wide field with the Hyades and Pleiades.

For DSS:
When you bring up the initial registration menu, be sure that "stack after registering" is NOT checked. After registering is complete, single click on your first file in the file list below. That frame will appear above. There is a slider at the upper right you can use to increase the brightness and make the comet easier to see. Once you move the cursor onto the frame, a graphic menu will appear to the right. Click on the comet icon. Move the cursor bullseye over the comet in the displayed frame (there is a close-up window in the upper left to help with this). Do a shift-click when the cursor is over the comet, then save by clicking the disc icon in the graphic menu. Repeat this for the last frame. Then you can reorder the file list by score (click on the "score" header). Do the same comet selection on the frame with the highest score. I'll sometimes do this on a few extra frames as well if there are lots.
After comet selection, click on stack frames. Go to the "stacking parameters" option (lower left). A comet sub-menu should show up as an option. Here you can chose the stacking mode - stars, comet, or comet+stars. The comet+stars can be very slow. Then you can chose stacking modes for light and dark frames, and proceed to stack.
DSS does not seem to gracefully stop when I hit the "cancel" button.
Often the color balance is not very good and needs to be fixed in Photoshop.

Hope this helps,
Kevin

[H-Alpha]

Thanks a lot Kevin and Alexandra.

Kevin I just purchased the PixInsight! I think that at the end is a must have, if we wish to have better results... I have just started stacking new captures of the comet. I went a bit further out of the town yesterday and Yeeeees!!! I got the ion tail! :-) :-) :-)

Below is the stacked result by DSS for just the luminance frames (with flats, darks etc.), simply streched (not processed at all). I am not happy with the result, so now all my hopes are in PixInsight and I feel confident that by following some good tutorials, I will have something descent at the end (after lots of work as usual...). In previous comet stacks in DSS I did not have star trails, or I did not stretch enough to detect them...

48 x Luminance streched.jpg (669.31 KiB) Viewed 1000 times

This is quite remarkable!!

I think I have more light pollution than you as I am even struggling to see the comet in my pictures. I have been using DSS and I have no idea how you mark the comet on the reference frames, how do you stop it mid processing? it all happens very fast. I click register images, then make sure around 100 stars are picked for alignment them press go and it all seems to do everything by default.

Alexandra

Alexandra, DSS is easy for some first results. I had no idea that it was even possible to stack comets in DSS until one week ago and then I found the following short youtube that I followed. Although Kevin kindly provided the instructions needed, I add the link that may be useful to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5IaYh66XOg

Hope you have the results you wish by reprocessing your subs.

Also hope I can post here a nice colourful comet in a few days/weeks from now...

Best wishes,
Alexandros

[KMH]

Alexandros,

PI definitely does better on the star trails than DSS and I think it will be worth it in the end. We're (almost entirely my wife) still on the learning curve. We're not yet able to completely eliminate the trails without compromising a bit on the amount of visible tail. But, I think we'll get there. My wife has found very useful tutorials from Adam Block and Visible Dark.

Kevin