C/2020 M3 Atlas

After C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, the next comet could only be disappointing. Nevertheless, it is still nice to image these kind of objects, so I tried to do that again this evening, now with C/2020 M3 Atlas.

This comet was discovered last June and reached a magnitude of +6.8 at its brightest (around November 18-26). Currently its magnitude is +8.2, significantly weaker than Neowise, which had a maximum magnitude of -1.2.

At the beginning of the evening the sky was clear, so the dome was opened, the comet's orbit loaded into the mount and the scope aimed at Atlas. After 20 lum-subs of 30s and a handful in red, the Zeus decided it was enough and the fun was over. Even out of the lum-series only 15 were good enough, so only 450s of data was processed in all.

Imaging was done with the SkyWatcher Esprit 150ED using the ZWO ASI1600MM Cool Pro. Processed in APP in comet mode, post-processed in PSP. The version shown here is a crop of the full plate.

Yesterday the clouds came in just a bit too early, today there was actually a bit too much wind. Despite that, I managed to image comet C/2020 M3 Atlas in LRGB, although half of the blue subs failed due to the fact that slit of the dome went through the wind, causing so much wind entering the observatory that even my GM3000 couldn't handle it well any more, with some disturbed subs as a result.

A total of one hour and twenty minutes of data was recorded:

L: 20 x 60s

R: 10 x 120s

G: 10 x 120s

B: 10 x 120s

Only half of blue has been processed, making the total integration time 1 hour and 10 minutes. Again processed in APP in Comet Mode, but now with integration on median, instead of maximum (I used that setting yesterday) to prevent the comet from being completely covered by the stars. Post-processing in PSP, the image shown is an approximately 50% crop.