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Brian Ottum
Animas, NM, USA
12/02/2021
05:00 am

Equipment Details:

Canon 5DmkIII, 10" f/5 reflector, PlaneWave L-350 tracking on the comet. Remotely-controlled from Michigan.

Post-processing Details:

5x300sec exposures. Converted, calibrated, aligned, stacked in ImagesPlus (now a free software). Photoshop used to correct color balance, increase contrast, fix bad pixels, crop.

Image Details:

It is exciting to see Comet 2021 A1 Leonard brightening! This is a great binocular object now, and even better when it joins Venus and crescent moon in the low twilight evening sky Dec 16-20. Since the mount was set to track the comet, the stars are streaked during the 25 minutes of total exposure. This comet is really moving through the inner solar system.