Comet Catalina US10
in the evening sky
Feb 12, 2016

 
 This
            is the very first comet shot with the newly rebuilt six inch
            astrograph. It has a 1.5 degree field with my ST10xme, and is
            sharp right to the corners at f/3.6 using both a schmidt corrector
            plate and Baader MPCC coma corrector. I will detail the
            scope on another page later, but in short - this is the Meade
            622 "Cometracker" schmidt newtonian built in 1985 and
            made **Exclusively** for viewing and imaging comets. Not
            too many scopes can claim that! This is an RGB image, each exposure
            is for 3 mins.
 

            
The cyan colored coma is followed by a faint
dust fan to the right, and a ray type gas tail
to the lower left.  The comet is currently around
7th mag and not visible to the eye.

            
 Click
            here for a larger 1290 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 1.5 x 1 degrees



            
This is the current setup in our observatory,
the 10 inch Orion astrograph and now the
six inch Cometracker is mounted on a thick plate
both then onto my Astrophysics AP1200 mount.

            
Click
            here for a larger 1290 sized image


            
Field here
            is about 180 degrees


Lens:  Meade 622 Cometracker Astrograph with Baader MPCC coma corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200 
Camera: SBIG ST10XME
Exposure:  9m
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  7/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  20F
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Photoshop CS2
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