Comet Utsunomiya

October 13, 1997 at 02:09 UT

This is Comet Utsunomiya. It is the result of combining 29 images, each with an exposure of 90 seconds. The first image was taken starting at 10:08pm local time on October 9^th. A Pictor 416xt was used on a Meade 10" F/6.3 telescope with a focal reducer making the system an F/4. Each image was corrected with a dark frame and with a flat field. Each image was median filtered prior to combining. The brightest pixel in the head of the comet was used to shift and combine the images. The resulting combined image was logarithmically stretched.