Equipment: Vixen 102-ED/STL-11000M/Astrodon LRGB filters/Losmandy G-11/Gemini
F-ratio: f/6.5
Exposures: LRGB: L 8 x 2 minutes, binned 2x2: R 8 x 2 minutes: G 8 x 2 minutes: B 8 x 2 minutes: RGB binned 3x3
Date: October 21, 2006
Location: Borrego Springs, California, USA
Technical Notes: Exposures were guided on the background stars. The exposures for each channel were aligned on the comet nucleus using the Align Centroids feature in CCDSoft, and then median combined. The resulting median-combined images for each channel were then aligned again with respect to each other in CCSoft and the LRGB image created in Photoshop CS2. Strong gradients were removed using Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator plug-in for Photoshop. Noise reduction and a Gaussian Blur of 1 pixel were applied to both the luminance and RGB images. The image displayed here is a crop of the central portion of the original image.