Submitted by: geheniau@xs4all.nl (geheniau@xs4all.nl) [27 Dec 04]
Here my Comet Machholz, also with animated gif to see the movement.
Submitted by: MaxIPTer@aol.com [23 Dec 04]
Submitted by: Submitted by: Graham, John L (Graham@udri.udayton.edu) [23 Dec 04]
I took advantage of a clear and bitterly cold evening last night (the morning of December 20th, UT) to image comet Machholz with a little larger telescope. Instead of my little StarBlast I used my Meade DS-2130 (5.1" f/8). The longer focal length of this telescope limited my exposures to 15sec, but over that interval the mount tracked fairly well. The DSI was mounted at the prime focus and setup to save every image with the histogram fixed at 3,500-8,000 using soft color balance. I selected the best 34 images acquired from 02h15m to 02h32m, corrected the field rotation, stacked them in Registax registering on the comet's nucleus, then adjusted the levels in PhotoShop. Just for reference consider the two stars in the upper left are just shy of 11th magnitude. I've also attached a picture assembled using the same data, but with the images stacked registering on the 11th magnitude star to the upper left of the comet showing the comet's motion against the background stars from 02h15m to 02h32m on December 20, 2004 (UT).
Submitted by: Dieter.Wolf@DNSint.com [19 May 04]
having seen C/2001 Q4 NEAT two times last week (close to Prokyon, Canis Minor) through gaps in the clouds we now had an evening clear enough to setup a scope for photographs. Although the comet becomes clearly weaker now day by day it can be seen more easily climbing up higher above the horizont. Dieter Wolf (Munich, Germany); 2004-05-17; 22:20 CEST (20:20 UTC); MEADE ETX-70AT with PHILIPS ToUCam SC1 at prime focus (15 out of 30 x10s exposures) Starting at Iota Cancri (4m) - which was fairly visible with the naked eye - I sometimes could catch the comet as a vague nebular spot. With a 10x50 binocular I saw a round coma. The ETX-70AT with 25mm SP showed that the coma was not 'round' but had something like a 'bow wave' and the nucleus was a bright starlike dot. No tail could be seen. In the photograph you can see some portions of the very broad dust tail. Well, it's not Hale-Bopp (my wife had a look and said: 'that's all?'...) Do you remember THE comet in 1997???
Submitted by: geheniau@xs4all.nl [19 May 04]
Neat did come out well.
Submitted by: "Luis Villa" (ETX_125EC_from_arizona@msn.com) [16 May 04]
Attached are two pictures I took of Comet NEAT, taken with a Nikon Cool Pix 995 coupled to my ETX-125 with a scopetronics Digi adapter and a 40mm lens. I used the 40 in hopes of capturing the comets tail, but not much there to capture. Both are quite noisy and you can see star trailing, I went with 30 and 45 second exposures with ISO set at 200 with Noise reduction on. I am hoping that my 35mm SLR pictures come out better than this. Maybe LINEAR will have a longer and more visible tail.
Submitted by: Kacper Wierzchos (k2_71828@yahoo.es) [16 May 04]
Im sending an image of the comet C/2001 Q4. Its very nice and Ive seen the comet without scope, its a really naked eye comet. The image was takent with the ETX-90, a TouCam pro and two modiffied focal reducers. Stacked with Registax and leveled with Photoshop. The image was taken on 14/05/2004 on 20:33 Ut.
In this e-mail I am sending you the gif annimation of the movment of C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) comet for your Guest Comets Gallery. This gif file animate 9 images. Each image was stacked by 6-8 single frames of 20 sec/frame. The time between first and last image is of 52 minutes. All frames were obtained by ETX90 (TouCam SC) according to the conditions mentioned in previous e-mail with composed image of C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) comet.
Submitted by: geheniau@xs4all.nl [16 May 04]
Depsite the bad bad weather I had exactly 38 minutes to put up my ETX and make these exposures of Comet Neat C/2001 Q4. After that clouds again :-(
Also for the comet galery The Comet with my etx90 and C2020Z. Not possible to see the comet with naked eyes here.
Submitted by: Tommy Lim KW (tommylim@emcs.com.my) [12 May 04]
Wish to share these photos of C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) taken from Malaysia with all the ETX user. In the process of taking these photos, I experienced several times of motor failure. I re-check the setting in my autostar handbox, it seems that everything was fine. What is the problem actually? I am using Nikon CP4500 with WO 28mm DC eyepiece attached to ETX125. The shutter speed is around 8 sec to 1 min, ISO800 + Neat image plus to handle the noise. Mike here: As to the motor failures, lots of possibilities: bad connections, failure to start in the proper HOME position, low batteries or AC line noise, dirty encoders, corrupted data in the Autostar. The last item can usually be corrected by a CALIBRATE and TRAIN DRIVES. Sometimes a RESET, CALIBRATE, TRAIN DRIVES sequence may be necessary. If none of the above is the cause, it may be necessary to redownload the Autostar software into the Autostar.