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Yours truly
Comet C/2004 F4 (Bradfield)
This was the result of my second and last attempt to image Bradfield. My first attempt got some wonderfully long star and comet trails (1 minute exposures, 70 mm focal length, on a tripod). This image was made by properly piggybacking my camera on a mount. Because of the short focal length, I did not attempt to guide the mount (which tracks pretty well anyway).Mirach is the bright star at the middle bottom of the image and that is M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, in the upper part, almost 8 degrees away from Mirach. This is a partial crop of the full image and I take the comet tail to be at least 10 degrees long. Imaged at Lake Sonoma at approximately 5 AM with a 98% full moon just having set.
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Date |
3 May 2004 |
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Scope |
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS zoom lens on Canon 10D camera, piggybacked on an A-P 900 GTO mount. The lens was set at 70 mm and f/2.8. |
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Exposure |
20 raw (CRW) frames @ 30 sec each at f/2.8, no filter |
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Processing |
Converted to tif in Photoshop CS, then combined in MaxIm. Gradient reduction, stretching, and smoothing in PhotoShop CS. |