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Greg Van den Bleeken | all galleries >> Galleries >> Nighstcapes and Astrophotography > Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) and Geminid
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13-DEC-2013

Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) and Geminid

Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) as seen near dawn on the night of 12 to 13 December 2013. This was Geminid meteor shower night, as proven by the surprize visit by one of them. This image thus shows the far away stars, a Comet in the inner Solar system, and a tiny dust particle burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

This is a composite of 77 light frames of 5s exposure (total: 6min25s), stacked in DeepSkyStacker. The meteor only occured in one of the frames, and was copied back in in Photoshop. This was my first attempt at taking pictures to be stacked, and at the time I did not really know what I was doing, so I didn't shoot any dark, bias, or flat frames...

Canon EOS 70D ,Sigma 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC APO HSM
77 x 5s, 150mm, f/2.8, iso 10000 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Greg Van den Bleeken03-May-2015 15:38
Thanks for your comment zonedout. The streak does indeed look like a satellite flare since it is so symmetric, but I observed this one in real-life, and it was clearly the swift "flash" of a meteor. If I hadn't seen it in real time though, I'd also have discounted it as a satellite trail...
zonedout03-May-2015 14:18
The streak of light on the left looks like an Iridium Flare?
Greg Van den Bleeken19-Aug-2014 16:03
Thank you Bryan! This was a re-edit of my shot from back in December (on which you also commented), and I was amazed to see how much more detail I got in the comet's tail by stacking. It takes some time (esp. on my old computer), but is absolutely worth the effort.
Bryan Murahashi19-Aug-2014 05:18
Fabulous astrophoto of Comet Lovejoy and the Geminid. Well done.
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