David Mathre Photography

Astrophotography

The night was clear, so I attempted to view comet 220P/McNaught again (RA/Dec: 00h21m31s, +02°41’46”). This time with the Vespera telescopes closer to the house. Trees were still in the way, and I was not able to observe the comet with the Vespera 3 telescope. The Vespera Pro 2 telescope was able to lock on and track the comet, through an opening between the limbs and leaves of the trees next to the house. The moon was also bright and nearby in the sky. The composite view (131 images, 1310 sec) had a messy background.

Vespera Pro 2

Comet 220P/McNaught viewed from my backyard with a Vespera Pro 2 Telescope. Frames: 0132; total exposure time: 1310 sec.
Comet 220P/McNaught viewed from my backyard with a Vespera Pro 2 Telescope. Frames: 0132; Total exposure time: 1310 sec. Unprocessed jpg image.

The image needed a lot of processing with PixInsight (GradientCorrection, SpectrophometricColorCorrection, NoiseXterminator) but did show the comet after cropping out the problematic background.

Comet 220P/McNaught viewed from my backyard with a Vespera Pro 2 Telescope. Frames: 0132; total exposure time: 1310 sec.
Comet 220P/McNaught viewed from my backyard with a Vespera Pro 2 Telescope. Frames: 0132; Total exposure time: 1310 sec. Image processed with PixInsight. Cropped (0.5° width). Annotated with astro grid.

The comet was fainter and the tail more difuse than on 06-June-2026. The estimated magnitude was +11.2. The unprocessed SOOT (straight out of the telescope) jpg and raw/tiff images for this observation are available on my PhotoShelter site (20260609).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *