Comet Close-Up

This image was created using Siril and GIMP from 45 photos of the comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS. I do not have a tracker, so I had to resort to relatively short exposures of 0.5 seconds and manually adjust the camera to keep up with the earth's rotation.

The photos were taken over a period of about 3.5 minutes, for a total exposure time of 22.5 seconds.

The small streaks seen beside the comet are stars. The comet is so fast, that even in this short time the background becomes blurred.

Nikon D500, Sigma 150-600mm C, 600 mm, f6.3, 45x1/2 s, ISO 3200, tripod
#comet #comet2023a3 #photography #astrophotography #germany #digikam #Siril #GIMP

Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

This image of the comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was stacked from 9 photos using Siril. Nearly all post-processing was done in Siril as well, with a final noise-reduction conducted in GIMP via G'MIC. As always, I used digiKam for cropping and watermarking of the final image.

Nikon D500, Sigma 150-600mm C, 150 mm, f5, 1s, ISO 3200, tripod
#comet #comet2023a3 #photography #astrophotography #germany #digikam #Siril #GIMP #GMIC

Comet Tail

The comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS with its very long tail. Due to clouds, it was nearly invisible to the naked eye, but I was able to get a few shots with different lenses. The tail was longer than I expected, so it was difficult to frame.

Nikon D500, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, 50 mm, f2,8, 5s, ISO 800, tripod
#nature #comet #comet2023a3 #landscape #photography #astrophotography #germany #digikam #RawTherapee #GIMP