2.  Discovered in August, 2014 by Terry Lovejoy  Was closest to Earth on January 7, ~4 th mag  Periodic comet, next visit in 8000 years  Now in Taurus, headed for Andromeda Gerald Rhemann, 12” f/3.6, Namibia

5.  Different rates create problems  With star tracks  Align on comet, not stars… special routine  Combine in usual way without removing outliers Jerry Lodriguss

6.  Without star tracks  Align on comet (image 1)  Align on stars (image 2)  Combine using sigma clipping

7. Comet image with stars removed by sigma clipping

8.  Combine star and comet image… the tricky part  Harry Page method using PixInsight  Some background on PixInsight  First, a disclaimer  “Cutting edge image processing and analysis tools for a broad range of technical imaging applications”  Basically an image processing toolbox with over 80 tools

9.  From Pleiades Astrophoto, S.L., Valencia, Spain  Not a “paint” program, big difference from PS  Available for PC, MAC, Linux, etc  $270 USD; all updates included; no refunds, but 45-day trial  Is it hard to learn?  NOT intuitive and very little written documentation  Similar to PS in this way… steep learning curve, but doable

10.  Warren Keller videos, 3 now available, $65  Harry Page’s (UK) videos  Free  www.harrysastroshed.com www.harrysastroshed.com  Lightvortex Astronomy, Kayron Mercieca  Well written workflows, including DSLR  Great for doing those first images  Gibraltar Astronomical Society website  Drake Visual… extensive list of resources  Bottom line… doable and worthwhile

11.  Is PixInsight a substitute for Photoshop?  No, IMHO they are complementary  Strengths of Photoshop… focused editing (“painting”)  Layers and masks  Curves and levels  Cloning and painting  Camera Raw noise reduction  Carboni Tools and other plugins  Is PixInsight a substitute for CCDStack, Images Plus, DSS, Nebulosity, Registar, etc? Yes

12.  Strengths of PixInsight  ScreenTransferFunction

13.  DynamicBackgroundExtraction (DBE) and ABE

14.  HistogramTransformation

15.  CurvesTransformation

16.  Other tools I find useful  Aligning and combining… may replace Registar  DynamicCrop  MaskedStretch  PixelMath  RangeSelection  ColorSaturation  LinearFit  Various noise reduction tools  Wavelets direct noise reduction  In my experience, overly smoothing

17. Step 1… generation of star image

18. Step 2… generation of comet image

19. Step 3… generate star mask from star image

20. Step 4… LinearFit to even out background Step 5… Add star image to comet image (with star mask)

21. Step 6… Process combined image in PixInsight and Photoshop