Comet 2002 V1 (NEAT)
I caught Comet 2002 V1 (Neat) at almost the last moment (February 7) before it disappeared into the glare of the sun. These CCD frames were captured just after sunset, starting with the comet only about 10 degrees above the western horizon and setting fast. The next night I took a more complete series of frames but because of the proximity ot the sun none were as good as this series. The breaks in the star tracks are due to having to discard several frames.
| Date | 2003-02-07 |
| Optics |
Astro-Physics 130 EDFs at f/4.5 with ST-10XME CCD camera at -15 °C on the A-P 1200 GTO mount. Unguided. |
| Exposure |
8 one minute R, G, and B frames using SBIG filters in SBIG CFW-8 filter wheel. |
| Processing |
Raw frames calibrated and hot pixels removed in MaxIm 3.09. Stacked and RGB combined in MaxIm with R=1.2, G=1.0, B=3 weighting. Blue weighting was increased because of the heavy blue extinction at the horizon. Stretched with levels and curves in PhotoShop 7.0. |