One from the archive

[Clive]

A couple of weeks ago whilst rummaging in the loft I came across the photos I took of Comet Halley during my trip to Australia.  I had only ever looked at them using a projector but as I now have a film scanner I decided to see if I could apply some processing to them.  My equipment at the time was a Praktica MTL3 SLR with an assortment of lenses mounted on a home-made tracker.  Looking thought the slides, most suffered from poor tracking or insufficient exposure but this image seemed to offer some hope.   It was taken using a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens from the outskirts of the town of Parkes, New South Wales (of the radio telescope fame).  Just a single 1 minute exposure at f2 taken on 06/04/86 at about 23:20 local time using Agfa 1000ASA colour slide film.

 

How must easier it is to process modern stacked DSLR images!  The original slide was scanned in at 3600 DPI giving a 48 bit TIF image of 5015 x 3372 pixels. The image had a distinct blue cast, the grain was significant and the stars suffered from both slight trailing and lens aberrations.  I could probably spend more time on it but not sure if it’s worth pursuing further.

 

Comet Halley is the smudge in the middle straddling the Milky Way just below Scorpius’s tail.  The bright star at the very top of the image is Antares.

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by Clive
Typo

[+Glafnazur]

I like that, nice one Clive 👍

[+Graham]

That is really impressive Clive considering the kit you were using.

I had one of those MTL 3's I seem to remember I purchased it from the old Freemans catalogue way back in the day. 😄.

 

 

[Clive]

13 minutes ago, Graham said:

That is really impressive Clive considering the kit you were using.

I had one of those MTL 3's I seem to remember I purchased it from the old Freemans catalogue way back in the day. 😄.

 

 

Thanks, I was surprised to see what I could extract from just a single 60 sec exposure on 1980s film.

I bought mine from Jessops who had recently opened in Leicester, an upgrade from my Zenit B, both of which are in a draw together will all the M42 lenses I collected.