How to Shoot and Process Comet Images

[@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.

[@enriqueojeda8883]

Great video! Thank you so much for this tutorial, just what I needed as I also shoot in mono and without fear of being wrong this is the best tutorial I have seen on processing comets in mono. Clear skies!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Great video Aaron! The result was superb!!

[@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

[@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

[@fferiag]

Great Video!!! going to follow it for the C/2024 S1, Fingers crossed it will work!

[@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.

[@roderickwho1983]

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

[@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?

[@acapulcoastro5967]

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

[@cityspaceastro]

Excellent Video - Thanks for sharing .

[@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.

[@ES-up4dq]

Great video! QQ - You mention manually editing the tracking errors in comet align. Do you have a reference that shows how to do that?

[@RigoFromSpain]

Well done, great tutorial !!!

[@tullyfisher]

Really cool and helpful tutorial. Thanks!

[@Aerostar509]

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

[@glennschiffer1742]

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

[@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

[@Psychlist1972]

Great video. Thanks!

[@patrickforster4148]

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

[@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

[@gertjanvanderkooij9242]

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

[@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.

[@zelodec]

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

[@PaoloBanci]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@shinpah1]

Wow this is a video

[@leftysastrophotography]

thx for the shoutout

[@ziggyjinx]

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

[@petermadsen3827]

allready lost me :-(

[@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 🤷