Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin

Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin

CLICK ONE OF THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

Download or View QuickTime B&W Movie (.mov) file - Best Resolution, 48 seconds, larger file (34Mb)
Download or View QuickTime B&W Movie (.mov) file - Medium Resolution, 3 seconds, smaller file (17Mb)
Download or View B&W Animated GIF (.gif) file - Lowest Resolution, does not require QuickTime (18Mb)
Download or View Single Stacked Color Image - stars removed with sigma reject - JPEG file (0.6Mb)

(Note-files may take a few minutes to compete download. QT movies will not begin until fully downloaded. Brightness levels change due to the different filters used for each frame. The total elapsed time for the movie is 2 hours, 29 minutes. Taken between 0600 - 0829 20-Feb-2009 Universal Coordinated Time.)

(click on image for larger size):

Image acquisition and processing details:

Telescope:	Takahashi Epsilon 180, f/2.8
Mount:	Astro-Physics AP1200
Camera:	SBIG ST-10XME cooled to -25C, internal guiding.
Filters, Exposure Times:	AstroDon Red, Green, Blue, and Luminance 24 x 30 seconds each.
Date:	2/19/2009
Moon Phase:	20%
Location:	Xanadu Observatory, Backyard in Tucson, AZ
Software:	CCDCommander, MaximDL, RoboFocus, FocusMax, TheSky, CCDStack, Adobe Photoshop CS4.
Notes:	The comet was moving extremely fast, requiring very short exposures. Subframes were stacked in CCDStack and aligned on the comet's nucleus, and sigma reject was applied to remove most of the star trails. For the movies, I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 to combine all 96 images into a single layered image, then placed each of the 96 layers into animation frames, then rendered the movie and gif.