Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)

[JimFox]

This is one of the 2 main comets out right now, and I have wanted to capture it for a while now, and last night I finally got a chance. I drove out to a State Park in Northern Colorado that's about an hour from my daughters house. I set up my Seestar S50 in EQ mode and started imaging. This one sets early, about 8:30pm right now, so I aimed for this and captured it first.

I just finished processing it in Pixinsight. It actually doesn't look too bad in camera. You can live stack in camera up to 5 minutes before the head starts to noticably streak in the image as the S50 is tracking on the stars while the comet moves faster. This is actually 40 minutes of the comet, since in Pixinsight I can do Comet Alignment so that the comet doesn't move.

Seestar S50
81 Lights @ 30 sec subs
Processed in Pixinsight
Finished in Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Interesting how you have to shoot it when your tracking device is fixated on star movement and not the comet. Needless to say this is quite different from how anything I shoot behaves. Nice image BTW.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Interesting colors in the comet. Is this worth trying with a landscape or is it too faint and need several minutes of exposure?

 

[JimFox]

Interesting how you have to shoot it when your tracking device is fixated on star movement and not the comet. Needless to say this is quite different from how anything I shoot behaves. Nice image BTW.

Thanks Alan, yep, thankfully Pixinsight added a specific tool called Comet Alignment after Neowise was such a big deal. Before that doing comets was an incredible pain.

 

[JimFox]

Interesting colors in the comet. Is this worth trying with a landscape or is it too faint and need several minutes of exposure?

Thanks Jameel!

It can be done with a landscape, that adds a whole new level of complexity. Last night I just wanted to focus on comet closeups, but I am checking out the weather to see if I have another chance it it this week, but Northerm Colorado is looking cloudy and windy for the next few days.

To get decent detail, yes you need several minutes at a minimum.

 

[Comet Hunter]

Nice job, capturiung comets are on my bucket list. Any recommended youtuube videos on how to capture them?

 

[JimFox]

Nice job, capturiung comets are on my bucket list. Any recommended youtuube videos on how to capture them?

Hey Ed, thanks!

You don't need a YouTube video to capture them, that's the easy part. Just setup your telescope and GoTo to the comet you are after. Lemmon is the best one right now, but it sets about 2 hours after sunset, so you have to get on it right away.

Processing comets is the hard part. Though it's not hard in a sense, it's just a few steps to go through.

Basically you do this:

1. Stack your images in WBPP
2. You take the Registered Lights into Comet Align
3. You run StarExterminator on all of the Aligned Comet images
4. You use Image Integration to stack all of the aligned Comet Images
5. Now process the comet
6. Use Star Exterminator on the Master, that will be your stars
7. Combine the comet and the stars

There are quite a few tutorials on YouTube, the one I have used is 2 years old, but that's when they last updated the Comet Alignment Tool in Pixinsight. It's from VisibleDark, I watched a lot of his videos in my early days of Pixinsight.

 

[Comet Hunter]

Hey Ed, thanks!

You don't need a YouTube video to capture them, that's the easy part. Just setup your telescope and GoTo to the comet you are after. Lemmon is the best one right now, but it sets about 2 hours after sunset, so you have to get on it right away.

Processing comets is the hard part. Though it's not hard in a sense, it's just a few steps to go through.

Basically you do this:

1. Stack your images in WBPP
2. You take the Registered Lights into Comet Align
3. You run StarExterminator on all of the Aligned Comet images
4. You use Image Integration to stack all of the aligned Comet Images
5. Now process the comet
6. Use Star Exterminator on the Master, that will be your stars
7. Combine the comet and the stars

There are quite a few tutorials on YouTube, the one I have used is 2 years old, but that's when they last updated the Comet Alignment Tool in Pixinsight. It's from VisibleDark, I watched a lot of his videos in my early days of Pixinsight.

Thank You!.......... more to learn lol

 

[Andy Elliott]

Nice one Jim. Tried to capture it with my Seestar S50 the other night but too many pesky clouds. Nice detail in the tail.

 

[JimFox]

Nice one Jim. Tried to capture it with my Seestar S50 the other night but too many pesky clouds. Nice detail in the tail.

Thanks Andy. I am dodging clouds here too. Friday night is looking clear again so I might go out and try again.