Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta Spacecraft and Philae Lander passing between M66 and NGC 3628

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Photographer
Mike Olason
Location of photo
Denver Colorado
Date/Time of photo
2016/04/07 0756UT and 0859UT
Equipment
11" SC Telescope and STF-8300M CCD Camera
Description
18th magnitude Comet 67P and the fantastic European Space Agency Rosetta Mission / Philae Lander passing between two 10th magnitude galaxies, spiral M66 and edge-on NGC 3628. The 2 layered images have different brightness and contrast in an attempt to show comet and galaxies as best as possible given how faint the comet is compared to the galaxies. The comet does have a 0.1 degree tail below the coma.
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CATEGORIES
Astronomy Pictures: Sky & Telescope's Online Gallery, Meteor, Comet & Asteroid Pictures
Mike Olason

About Mike Olason

I started imaging comets in 1994 with an ST-5 CCD Camera and an 11" SC Telescope. Since then the CCD cameras have changed (ST-7, ST-402ME and STF-8300M), but I am still using the 11" SC Telescope. Naturally I have used a lot of smaller telescopes to obtain larger fields of view. I live south of Denver at an elevation of 6150 feet which allows me to image comets down to about magnitude 20.5. My images are not pretty, they have only been dark subtracted, flat fielded, contrast/brightness adjusted and maybe a median filter to reduce the image noise. This is all done with the camera software CCDOps. The comet images reflect reality, not photographic artistry.
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