[BAA Comets] C/2014 Q2 animation 2015-01-24

[Nick James]

I managed another long animation of C/2014 Q2 last night from 1834 
through to 2304. The timelapse consists of 13 frames, each of which is 
10x120s offset on the comet's motion. The field of view is 2.3 x 1.1 
deg, N up. Not much is going on though:

http://www.nickdjames.com/Comets/2015/2014q2_20150124_ndj.gif

I have a data processing pipeline for this which is now almost 
completely automatic. Image calibration and stacking is done with 
existing scripts  but alignment, background normalisation and stacking 
is done with an auto-generated IRIS script which you can see here if you 
are interested:

http://www.nickdjames.com/Comets/2015/proc.pgm

It's not quite right yet since, as you can see from the sequence, a 
change in transparency makes the coma diameter change through the 
animation. This should be fairly simple to fix...

If anyone wants to spend a few hundred dollars on a 6hr sequence of 
images of this comet using the widefield itelescope system in New Mexico 
I'd be happy to process the sequence. It would be a spectacular timelapse!

Nick.