Observation Log - July 12, 2001 - Tinton Falls, NJ

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[Tonight was a nice session, with temps in the 50's. This was the first time I had put the 12" LX200 together since the trip to NY. Configuration was: Crayford, f/3.3 reducer, 1.25" vis back, and the MX516. Took bias and dark frames during alignment, then took flats during morning twilight. Had the moon rise after midnight, but no dew. -GW]

This is Comet C/2001 A2 (Linear), photographed in Pegasus. This image was made from 64 20-second exposures (just over 21 minutes total integration time) taken between 3:56 and 4:35 a.m. the morning of July 12, 2001. The images were calibrated using MaxIm, aligned and composited (aligned on the comet nucleus), and a Digital Development filter (FFT, low-pass, hard) was applied. I used a Rayleigh histogram and the resulting image was finished with a contrast enhancement. The comet was moving very fast, toward the upper right. And here is an MPG movie that shows the motion of C/2001 A2 (Linear) across the stellar background. This movie compresses about 37 minutes of motion into a short little animation. To create this animation, I took the 64 individual FITs images, and processed each for calibration, resizing, a Digital Development filter (FFT, low- pass, hard), an FFT filter (low-pass, medium), and a contrast stretch. Each frame was then saved as a JPG file, and the resulting images were combined into an MPG movie using Image Explorer Pro.