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Comet CCD Images

The images on these pages are of various comets taken with my CCD camera. The problem with imaging comets is that they move across the sky at a different rate to the stars. If you do a long exposure while guiding on the stars, the comet will become smudged. The only way around this is to try and get an image of reasonable length so neither stars or comet smudges. With very dim or fast moving comets this can be difficult. Some of my images show the comet, but the stars trail. This is because I added multiple images taken half a minute or so apart. In this short period of time, the stars positions have changed relative to the comet and make lines on the image. If there is a gap between the star trails, that is due to a time difference between each successive image.