Comet Lulin C/2007 N3

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This image was taken robotically through the Tzec Maun Project's Epsilon 180 on the night of March 1, 2009. I took 12 one minute images and one 5 minute image.
Equipment: Takahashi Epsilon 180 with SBIG ST200XCM one-shot color camera
Processing: Since the E-180 is set up for beginners on the Tzec Maun site, one can't specify what to autoguide on, so I kept the sub-exposures short and did two sets of combinations, one by registering the stars, and one by registering on the comet nucleus. See Bernard Hubl's excellent comet processing document for full instructions on how to blend the two stacks.

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This image was taken at Galaxy Quest Observatory in Lincolnville, Maine on Feb. 25, 2009 with an NP-101 and a SBIG ST-2000 and Astrodon color filters. We autoguided on a star for the starfield images, and on the comet nucleus for the comet images. The autoguider was a 14" LX200!
I think I messed up on the color weighting, because the tail was so red that I radically reduced the red weighting, thinking that because of the low altitude, the blue and green were extincted much more than the red, but in subsequent images (see above), There does seem to be a great deal of red in the tail.