This is an image of comet C/2022 E3 ZTF, taken on the night of February 5, 2023, as the comet departed our vicinity. The image was created from 76 one minute exposures taken over a 2 hour period with an ASI 071MC Pro camera on a William Optics Fluorostar 91 telescope. The images were calibrated and stacked with PixInsight.

Because the comet moves relative to the stars, it was necessary to create an image of the stationary stars with the comet blurred and another image of the stationary comet with the stars blurred. Then a "stars-only" image was created from the stationary stars image, using Russell Croman's StarXTerminator plugin for PixInsight. A "comet-only" image was created using PixInsight's CometAlignment process, and finally these two images were combined using the PixelMath process in PixInsight.

Absent from this image is the comet's ion tail. Either the ion tail has substantially disappeared now, or the full moon on the night this image was created prevented the ion tail from being seen against the bright sky background.