103P/Hartley 2023-Nov-12 Dan Bartlett

After comet 103P/ Hartley's closest approach to the sun, on October 12th we've seen this comet fade to 11th magnitude (from slightly better than 10th around perihelion). The background is quite messy, with few indescribable galaxies and an excess of IFN that confuses the viewer as to where the comet's tail fades away. In this images, I've decided to crop the field down to 2.1 x 1.5 degrees since the FOV showed little interest and the size of the file was quite large from the full frame camera. This was a last minute early morning shoot, as comet Hartley had just traveled below the celestial equator in the constellation of Hydra (the cabin blocks much of this sky area).

Full Resolution : https://astrob.in/1qwguo/B/

Observational details:
Backyard setup
scope: RASA11 D = 279mm; fl =620mm;
exposure: 41 x 180 sec
Seeing: 4/5
Transparency: 9/10
Observer: DEBartlett
Place: June Lake_California USA

Image Details:
Projection ............... Gnomonic
Projection origin ........ [1506.088567 1073.022484] px -> [RA: 8 46 56.884 Dec: -0 50 17.33]
Resolution ............... 2.503 arcsec/px
Rotation ................. -4.024 deg
Reference system ......... ICRS
Observation start time ... 2023-11-12 11:52:48 UTC
Observation end time ..... 2023-11-12 11:55:48 UTC
Geodetic coordinates ..... 119 04 46 W 37 46 51 N 2360 m
Focal distance ........... 619.65 mm
Pixel size ............... 7.52 um
Field of view ............ 2d 5' 39.7" x 1d 29' 31.9"
Image center ............. RA: 8 46 56.884 Dec: -0 50 17.35 ex: -0.026655 px ey: -0.077507 px
Image bounds:
top-left .............. RA: 8 50 54.821 Dec: -0 01 16.43 ex: -1.355798 px ey: -1.335656 px
top-right ............. RA: 8 42 33.782 Dec: -0 10 06.09 ex: +0.172359 px ey: -1.805283 px
bottom-left ........... RA: 8 51 20.100 Dec: -1 30 33.26 ex: -1.326421 px ey: -0.030823 px
bottom-right .......... RA: 8 42 58.602 Dec: -1 39 21.83 ex: -0.375469 px ey: +0.014497 px