DF9CY Christoph Petermann - Astrophotography

This evening after sunset a first time the comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS should be visible for us here a little bit left of the moon. And we were lucky ! A little bit disappointed too, because the comet looked much smaller and fainter than we expected.

Again between the clouds. But this time I was able to make a useful series of images.

I was lucky and cold catch the comet between two late March snow and hail showers.

This cut out of the image above shows a little more detail.

PanSTARRS with the 135mm lens through the clouds

I had the chance for only 3 images through the 80/480mm refractor

Comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS through the Nighthawk refractor 80/480mm at 19.22 CET local time.

A little bit earlier at 19.08 CET this image was made.

Equipment

Optics           : StellarVue Nighthawk Achromat Refractor d=80mm f=480mm (f=1/6)
                 : Intes MK-67 Maksutov Type Reflector d=150mm f=1800mm (f=1/12)
Camera           : NIKON D7000 DSLR unmodified
                 : The Imaging Source DMK21AU4.AS monochrome USB highspeed camera
                 : Philips ToUcam 740 Color WebCam
Filter           : IR/UV Cut, Astronomik H-Alpha, Astronomik LRGB
add. optics      : ED 2x Barlow lens
                 : 35mm, 50mm, 135mm and 200mm NIKON lenses available
Mount            : VIXEN GP with MT1 / Littlefoot Controller
Guiding          : PHD
Aquisition       : Robust Sony VAYO Pentium4 Notebook (Windows XP) or DELL D820 DualCore (Windows 7)
Image Processing : ImagesPlus, NeatImage 7, PaintShopPro XI, PhotoShop LE 9, Registax 6, AviStack 2.0