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Comet Processing with Galaxies Present

John Kmetz
in PixInsight
Am trying to process my data on Comet Leanord from November 24th when it was passing between the Whale and Crowbar Galaxies. Got about 75 x 60sec frames with Lum filter on an ASI2600MM mono cam. Was easily able to create a comet stacked image and a star stacked image (attached). Now when I try to paste the star data over the comet image, I can't figure out what to do with the galaxy residuals in the comet frame, or how to get rid of the streaked comet in the star stack image. 

Just creating a star mask doesn't let me keep the galaxies. Complicating this is the comet tail trailing right over the Whale, so how to separate one from the other? I am assuming I need to go back and image the same area again without the comet being there now and get some more data. But still then how to mask and combine later I am not sure. Have seen some images posted online with other objects like globular clusters, but no galaxies, and none with galaxy and comet crisscrossing.

Any guidelines on how to proceed with processing would be appreciated.

Thanks,

John


Comments

  • BlockHeadBlockHead
    That is a particularly tough challenge. There certainly isn't a playbook for this.
    Off the top of my head- I would approach the problem from starless images. Only the galaxy and comet (mostly) exist in the starless images. In this particular case you would need to use CometAlign to subtract the comet from the starless images (if you are using my method that I just posted). Then you will have a starless image with just the galaxies. You might be able to subtract the galaxies from the comet images... 

    It would be complicated... lots of subtracting from images. You would basically be working towards getting a stars only image, a galaxies only image and a comet only image.

    -the Blockhead
  • John Kmetz
    Thanks Adam. Will try to create some subtracted images like you suggested. Thought I had a pretty cool perspective with the comet's location but didn't anticipate these complications.

    Regards,

    John
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