Comet 17P/Holmes

Visual View through Scope

Comet Core

Enhance View to Show Core Region

Description:

Comet 17P/Holmes was discovered more than 100 years ago and since then it has made 16 orbits around the Sun. This comet shocked astronomers on Oct. 24th, 2007 with a spectacular eruption. In less than 24 hours, the 17th mag. comet brightened by a factor of nearly a million becoming a naked-eye object in the evening sky. It is located in the constellation Perseus.

After capturing and processing my original image, I decided to stretch and enhance the image to see if I could see any detail in the core region. Wow!!! Was I surprised!!! A lot going on inside this thing!!!!!

This is an amazing object that hopefully will be visible for a while, although nobody really knows how long. Hopefully, I will be able to capture more of the inner workings of this magnificent object.

Photographic Details:

Date & Location: October 29th 2007, Santa Fe, Texas.
Scope: Obsession 20” f/5 on a Tom Osypowski Dual Axis Equatorial Platform, Orion 100mm f/6 Guidescope.
Autoguider: SC1 Mod Celestron Neximage Cam, Shoestring GPUSB guide port interface adapter, and Guidemaster software
Camera: Canon 20D DSLR (non-modded), homemade serial control shutter release cable and DSLR shutter from Stark Labs.
Filters: IDAS LPR Filter
Conditions: Temp 55F, Humidity 88%, Winds Calm, Transparency 6/10, Seeing 7/10.
Exposures: 30 x 10sec @ 1600 ISO Sub Frames, 9 x 10sec Darks.
Post-processing: 3504x2336 Raw files converted to Lossless 16-bit FITS, calibrated, aligned, and combined with ImagePlus software. Slight wavelet filtering with Registax 4.Final processing PhotoImpact Pro.