Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) and its ionic tail
Taken by Juan Carlos Casado on January 29, 2023 @
Sant Llorenç de la Muga, Spain
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Camera Used: Canon Unavailable
Exposure Time: Unavailable
Aperture: Unavailable
ISO: Unavailable
Date Taken: 2023:02:02 19:45:37
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Details:
This image shows the structure of comet C/2022 E3 ZTF, known these days in the media as the "green comet".
To capture the faint structures of the long ionic tail I had to go to the small village of Sant Llorenç de la Muga (northeastern Spain), near the French border.
To photograph the comet I used a 200 mm f/1.8 superluminous telephoto lens attached to a digital reflex camera on a simple portable equatorial mount. I made 40 exposures of 30 seconds each, so that the rapid movement of the comet on the stellar background would not blur the cometary details.
I had to wait until after moonset (3 h local), to get dark sky. The comet was borderline visible to the naked eye as a faint out-of-focus star near the Pole star (January 29).
On previous days the tail was brighter and more visible, but this day it showed a thin, long extension ending in turbulent structures.
To process the captured images I first aligned all the images with the comet nucleus using a median combination to suppress the stars, since focusing on the comet motion left traces. I also performed an alienation of the stars, so that they would appear punctual. Finally I combined both images to obtain this image.
The image shows the angular scale, with the Moon as size reference, as well as the orientation of the field.
Photographer's website:
https://www.jccasado.com
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