Strangers In the Night by Nick Howes

It took several weeks for Nick Howes of Cherhill, Wiltshire, UK to come up with this amazing image of Comet Hartley 2 and NGC281. But I’m sure you’ll agree with me – the wait is definitely worth it!

Nick Howes explained how he obtained this stunning photo.

“Initial run using an Atik 314L camera and narrowband CCD filters (Astronomik HA/OIII/SII and CLS) imaged the comet in the field of NGC281, using a multi pane wireframe approach (taking just a few subs for each of the 4 areas including the starfield/NGC281).
Then the comet was imaged in full on the night of closest approach to NGC281, with 30-60s sub frames in HA/OIII/SII narrowband augmented by a CLS filter. where the OIII channel really lit up quite well.
…gradually over several weeks, data was gathered to get enough sub frame time on the nebula in narrowband, mapping to a combination pallette of HST mapping and HA/OIII/SII, (total integration time around 12 hours in 300s sub frames), and the surrounding starfields. As the comet was moving very quickly, this was the only way it could be done to achieve this level of detail and complexity in the final image.”

Nick also provided us with the camera specs and imaging techniques he used.
Atik 314L and Atik 4000CCD
Manually composited, along with use of Registar/MAxim DL/Photoshop CS5
TMB105 F6.2 refractor
Autoguided by PHD guide/ST102
EQ6 mount using EQ MOD and EQ Mosaic for the initial wireframe
Processed in Maxim DL/Registar and Photoshop CS5 using Noels Actions and Focus Magic plug in/DDP processing in MAxim DL for Nebula, Deconvolution FT process on star fields and nebula in Maxim DL.
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