How to Shoot and Process Comet Images

In this video we take a look at imaging and processing comets! With c/2022 E3 ZTF in the news lately it seems like the perfect time to teach an easy and simple new method to image in NINA and process comet images in PixInsight. Now here's a long list of links:
Flowchart Image: www.darkflats.com/Comets/C202...
Jonathan MacCollum's Website and Astrobin: www.darkflats.com/
www.astrobin.com/users/eigenV...
Charles Hagen Starless Processing Icons: www.nightphotons.com/guides/s...
Starnet GPU Acceleration: darkskies.space/pixinsight-st...
(for my 3060ti these versions work: cuda 11.4, cudnn 8.2.2.26, and libtensorflow 2.6. Your card may vary)
How to add comets to Stellarium: • How to add a comet or ...
Now Alaskan Astro stuff:
New website at: www.AlaskanAstro.com
Agena Affiliate Link: bit.ly/AlaskaAgena
Thanks all for watching! I hope this video is a helpful tutorial to help you shoot and edit this current comet or any new comets in your astrophotography career.

[@jonathanmaccollum6694]

Nicely done! That image is fantastic! The diagram was put together before PixInsight released it's updated Comet Alignment module, so feel free to try out the new option that lets you avoid the double interpolation by aligning the comets on the pre-star-aligned images too!

[@astro_che]

NINA is my favourite astrophotographer

[@justintolboe]

Big agree.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Great video Aaron! The result was superb!!

[@roderickwho1983]

Your dog's tail would put any comet to shame :-) Great video. Thanks

[@ClearAmbientSkies]

I was just looking at your channel yesterday, and it had been 8 months since you had put something out there. I was disappointed. haha Great to see different workflows on comets. Your final image was superb. I have processed two images of ZTF so far in PI. I have a few more nights of unprocessed data and intend to keep imaging it for a while. I'm eager to try your workflow examples. Thanks to everyone and yourself for all your contributions to amateur astrophotography. Next time I buy something from Agena (I do often), I'll be sure to use your affiliate link. Instant like when you publish a video. Welcome back! Clear skies and God bless ya man. -jason

[@siegfriednoet]

Beautiful result and an very well explained tutorial

[@uschi414]

Great to see you posting another video, Aaron! As usual it was informative and entertaining. Keep up the good work.

[@andynowlen]

22:13 Hurray great to see this reference at the end of a great video teaching. Thanks.

[@lizards821]

Dude this video is the ish thank you! Holy moly your production quality is outstanding

[@tullyfisher]

Really cool and helpful tutorial. Thanks!

[@acapulcoastro5967]

Great tutorial Aaron. Going to give this a go with my comet subs now

[@RigoFromSpain]

Well done, great tutorial !!!

[@Aerostar509]

On the way home from church I was having the same thoughts about processing my latest comet data as the little girl!

[@cityspaceastro]

Excellent Video - Thanks for sharing .

[@Psychlist1972]

Great video. Thanks!

[@glennschiffer1742]

nice! I'm trying to follow the best i can because I'm using one shot color

[@jackbernstein3029]

Excellent video. I have been struggling for days with my C/2022 E3 (ZTF) stacks and HATE the image with star trials. I can’t wait to try this out and see if I get a presentable image.

[@bigdog1452]

Did you figure it out?

[@jackbernstein3029]

@@bigdog1452 Still playing. It will eventually work. The trick comet aligned stacking after using StarXterminator to get rid of the stars. This is combined with a stars only image.

[@gertjanvanderkooij9242]

fantastic result,image.I am little jealous at you.Only clouds here in the netherlands.

[@yourfavoriteastronerd]

That's very good! Good videos and production! I am still struggling with my editing. I think, I just need to simply it like you did. What is the name of that process icon you dragged to add the stars?

[@leftysastrophotography]

thx for the shoutout

[@zelodec]

Thanks. Star residuals are invisible in my final image. 👍

[@bertmoyaers3814]

Great video. I will definitely try this process on the subs I’ve taken last night. Related to loading the coordinates from Stellarium to NINA. Did you know that there is a plug-in called Orbitals in which you can load the coordinates for solar, moon, planets, comets and asteroids? From the plug-in you can frame the object in just 1 click. I have been using this for a couple of times now and it works really great. Give it a try. All the best Bert

[@AlaskanAstro]

Great tip! I like that stellarium lets me see how the comet will change through the night and view the tail direction. I haven't played around with orbitals to know how those features stack up.

[@shinpah1]

Wow this is a video

[@llamarvasquez1803]

Awesome video thank you for this had a question though for the GPU acceleration is that only for starnet or does it apply to starxterminator?

[@AlaskanAstro]

It works on the entire Xterminator suite too.

[@patrickforster4148]

I did comet only rgb channel combine, result is linear and won’t convert to non- linear. Help!

[@tomtoka]

well, it wont work for me, I takes hours to do the starXterminator, liteally the whole night and it didnt finish, I have super fast PC, so I dont know what is goingit

[@PaoloBanci]

The integration process give me an error... Zero or insignificant signal detected (channel 1)

[@tomtoka]

Great ! can you share how many frames and how long exposure you did on each filter?

[@AlaskanAstro]

Was about 70 x 60s per RGB I believe

[@stefanoantonini6293]

Great video, thanks! I have one question: if I want to drizzle integrate both the starless picture and the stars, what's the right procedure? Comet alignment does not generate drizzle files, but can update existing ones. So should I 1) star align generating drizzle data 2) make a copy of the drizzle data 3) feed the star aligned subs+ copy of drizzle data to comet alignment and update drizzle data 4) remove stars from both star aligned and comet aligned subs 5) drizzle integrate the two sets ? Thank you!

[@AlaskanAstro]

That's a great question to which I don't know the answer. Maybe try both on a small subset of your images and see what works.

[@stefanoantonini6293]

@@AlaskanAstro ok thanks for the answer!!

[@renegade339]

Question about using StarXterminator on the individual subs... did you have any issues/occurrences with it removing the nucleus of the comet? I had that happen on three or four of the 20 I ran through it. I could just remove those few from the stack, but I didn't know if there was a trick you knew to be able to use all subs.

[@AlaskanAstro]

my nucleus wasn't sharp enough in any of my subs to get removed. I would probably remove those from the stack or see if you even need to, if they don't cause any weird artifacts in the stack.

[@Kettykis]

I used Script Game to create a mask around the core of the comet. This works whith StarX.

[@tomtoka]

I have issue with this , the RcXStarExterminator has been running for the whole night !! and I really have very powerful PC,. not sure what is going on, but this cant be like that

[@AlaskanAstro]

Yeah sorry not sure. Probably want to look for support with the software author.

[@ziggyjinx]

I thought you said it was going to be easy… I’ve just a DSLR with zoom lens and Tripod !!

[@AndoAstro]

Funny. Local normalisation would have filled in your dark borders on integration:) ref. Adam block

[@hael8680]

Way too fast.......

[@bamsemh1]

Ez + simple. Starts showing something that looks exactly as complicated as programming apps 😬 very misleading title. And I kind of feel this is only for trackers, not simple astro shooters 😬

[@AlaskanAstro]

Sorry, not really my target audience 🤷