Comet 103P Hartley - 101019

Taken with a William 98FLT on an AP 900GTO mount, 60 unguided frames of 60 sec each, then manually stacked on the comet in AstroArt and further processed in Photoshop. If you magnify the trails enough you'll see the individual star images. The long trails are indicative of the speed it's moving across our sky, though this should slow as it moves away from us and it should have started that on the 20th.
Not as bright as the pundits forecast, quite difficult to see in binoculars though easier in a telescope except when the Moon is as big and bright and close as it has been this week.
Brian

M42 - 101006

A clear but very dewy night with some high haze. I couldn't resist this. Always a difficult target because of its wide dynamic range. I tried to get a reasonable result without having to take a variety of exposure lengths, short to suit the Trapezium and long to suit the nebulosity. The equipment used was the WO 98 and M25C, but the work is mostly in the processing and this time I tried a self-devised DDP curve in Photoshop. I think with a modicum of success, but many more chances to photograph this target in the coming months.
The exposure was 15x120sec, perhaps between two stools? But the process is worth pursuing for this or other targets.
Stacking and calibration, flats and bias, in AstroArt and all the rest in Photoshop, including some GradX and High Pass sharpening.