Observation by Grant Privett: Gothic Stones and 2023 A3

Uploaded by

Grant Privett

Observer

Grant Privett

Observed

2024 Oct 17 - 18:46

Uploaded

2025 Apr 23 - 22:16

Objects

C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)

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Constellation

Serpens Caput

Field centre

RA: 15^h38^m
Dec: -02°44'
Position angle: +37°17'

Field size

16° × 23°

Equipment

Canon M5 and FD f/1.8 50mm lens @f/4

Exposure

30x 6secs @1600 ISO

Location

Stonehenge

Title

Gothic Stones and 2023 A3

About this image

I took more than 30 6sec exposures at 1600ISO using the Canon M5 on a tripod. Employing f/4 was an accident, I meant to use f/1.8.

When I started the comet was invisible to the naked eye, but it became more apparent as time passed.

I processed the frames using Sequator to freeze the foreground and align and stack the skies. After that, the sky gradient was quite large, so I used Astro Art 8 to reduce that a bit - but AA8 doesn't know about foregrounds and backgrounds, so the stones became a bit gothic and ominous. Which was a fortuitous surprise.

I was happy with any of the 30 single frames for the evenings effort - they were all pretty. Getting hints of the anti-tail was just icing on the cake.

Thanks to English Heritage for the opportunity.

Files associated with this observation

Privett-Gothic-Stonehenge-BAA.jpg (1.5 MB)

Like this image

Paul Whitmarsh, Gary Eason, Callum Potter, Dominic Ford, David Basey, Matthew Terrell

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