Same photo of comet 2P/Encke, but the stars were removed with MiPS to better show the extended coma. (MiPS is an acronym for Microcomputer Image Processing System - version 2.0, 1993, by Buil, Klotz, Prat, Szczepaniak, & Thouvenot; copyright 1993, Christian Buil, France). This software is supplied with the Hi-SIS 22 CCD camera; but I am the author of this star removal routine - written in MiPS "macro code". Comet LINEAR C/2002 T7 on 2/15/2004. A composite of 7 1-minute exposures started at 1:46pm UT. Taken with Meade LXD-55 10-inch at F/4 using a Hi-SIS 22 CCD camera with a Kodak KAF-0400 chip. The field is normally 0.26 by 0.39 degrees, but is cropped slightly here. There is a 1/4 deg. tail extending beyond the fov. The magnitude was measured with the MiPS "Phot" function as 7.5. |  |
Comet LINEAR C/2002 T7 on 12/18/2003 2:58-3:13 Universal Time (UT). MiPS can measure and graph pixel intensities along a line, and this shows their values along a line through the coma and nucleus at right angles to the solar radius vector. (Note that the length of the trace is the same as the length of the graphs' x-axis. No pixel values below 7800 are shown, because a high-value was chosen to best show the nearly point-like nuclear condensation.) |
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At right, comet Hale-Bopp from 2:27 to 2:29 UT on 4/01/1997. This is a 2 minute exposure on Fuji G 400 speed color print film. The lens is a 5-inch aperture f/2.0 opaque projector lens which I mounted to a Pentax camera body. The lens was found at an antique store near Mile-Hi stadium in Denver for a ridiculously low price of $10 - yet it forms nice pinpoint star images. The observing location was my residence - about 25 miles north of Denver, Colorado. Note the clumpiness of the blue ion tail streaming to the right, and the yellowish dust tail arching down to the right. | |
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