C/2022 E3 (ZTF) 2023-Feb-09 Dan Bartlett

Funny when you have months to years of data on a typical DSO and you publish, the image is timeless in appearance. However when you have a comet image that is a week or two or months old, the image appears as yesterday's news. This image is of this appearance.

Here is 90 x 30 seconds of Comet C/2023 E3 (ZTF) imaged as it traveled from the Auriga - Taurus border. The comet had moved past its closest approach to the earth a little over a week prior, hence the shortened 30 sec exposures. The plasma tail is still prominent as the yellower dust tail is patchy due to the background dust. Scope used is the RASA11 and the full sensor camera asi6200mcP.

Special note: Several times in the past I resampled all image data before processing to speed up the image processing. This did dramatically increase my processing time however the cleanliness of the processed image suffered (star color saturation, loss of detail, etc). Lesson learned - no resampling even with full frame (very slow) camera data!

Observational details:
Backyard setup
scope: C11 RASA D = 279mm; fl =618mm; F# 2.2
camera: asi 2600mcP
exposure: 90 x 30 sec
Seeing: 4/5
Transparency: 9/10
Observer: DEBartlett
Location: June Lake, California, USA

Image Details:
Projection ............... Gnomonic
Projection origin ........ [2317.343648 1537.240537] px -> [RA: 4 54 36.694 Dec: +29 06 11.81]
Resolution ............... 2.509 arcsec/px
Rotation ................. 0.046 deg
Reference system ......... ICRS
Observation start time ... 2023-02-10 02:58:34 UTC
Observation end time ..... 2023-02-10 05:27:58 UTC
Geodetic coordinates ..... 119 04 46 W 37 46 30 N 2357 m
Focal distance ........... 618.17 mm
Pixel size ............... 7.52 um
Field of view ............ 3d 13' 50.2" x 2d 8' 33.3"
Image center ............. RA: 4 54 36.677 Dec: +29 06 12.36 ex: +0.000044 px ey: -0.000053 px
Image bounds:
top-left .............. RA: 5 02 05.369 Dec: +30 09 40.05 ex: -0.001968 px ey: -0.001773 px
top-right ............. RA: 4 47 08.272 Dec: +30 09 47.89 ex: +0.000675 px ey: -0.000272 px
bottom-left ........... RA: 5 01 55.690 Dec: +28 01 06.45 ex: +0.000082 px ey: +0.000754 px
bottom-right .......... RA: 4 47 17.144 Dec: +28 01 13.54 ex: +0.000260 px ey: +0.000513 px

Full resolution can be found here:https://astrob.in/p02fk7/B/