macholtz and pleiades

Skies finally cooperated on Friday night. Here's my very first attempt
at astrophotography with the canon digital rebel. It's amazing how easy
this thing is to use.

https://webspace.utexas.edu/hillcp1/...%2003 30z.jpg

This is a combination of 4 30 second exposures at ISO400, through a
vintage pentax smc takumar screwmount 200mm telephoto lens @ f/4,
piggybacked on a c8. The image has been washed and tweaked a bit with
photoshop. Not too shaby for a first try. Can't quite get the magenta
skyglow out yet, but I'm working on it.

I'm not recording much tail at all. Here's a reverse grayscale of the
comet itself before processing (ie only the 4 tiffs combined and then
saved as a jpeg after cropping):

https://webspace.utexas.edu/hillcp1/...0greyscale.jpg

Chris