It’s currently very windy outside, but good seeing and only a few wispy clouds. I’ve been imaging Holmes(17P) again and have tried some trickery with image processing to bring out the internal structure of the comet nucleus. I’ve not had much success so far and after 45 minutes or so I slewed back to Mirfak and noticed the focus was out.  A quick trip out into the cold and everything is readjusted ready for the next avi capture.

Here’s a pretty version of the comet after some extreme processing. I can’t tell you how I got to this, It was “unsharp mask” and “find edges” mostly, but I think you’ll agree it doesn’t look like all the other comet photos on the web!

I’m still imaging, so hopefully there’ll be some better images before the night is over. Watch this space (excuse the pun).

It didn’t take long for my luck to run out. It’s about 1hour since the last sentence and the clouds have moved in. I’ve packed everything away as I can’t risk getting the equipment rained on while I’m sat indoors unaware of the changing weather outside.

I was in the process of moving to NGC457 the Owl Cluster in Cassiopeiae when I realized the poor image quality was cloud not misalignment. I managed 1 frame from an avi of 30 but even that has been smeared a little by the wind. I’ve imaged this one before, it may have been the first open cluster I ever found through the eyepiece, and still draws me back. When I’ve imaged this with a mono camera I had no idea that some of the stars were different colours, and this poor single frame doesn’t do the cluster justice.

I have produced another over-processed Holmes which emphasizes the compression artefacts as much as anything else, but I like it anyway.