Comet C/2025 R2 Swan and the Sun

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Animation of comet C/2025 R2 Swan: On the night of the 20th October we were able to locate comet C/2025 R2 Swan from Alentejo Portugal using Jim Startup's 8" RC scope by entering dynamic coordinates for the fast moving comet into SharpCap. The comet was tracked for 24 minutes with data captured using SharpCap with some 143 frames taken with an Altair mono camera. The gif was produced by using the Blink utility of Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop to make a short animation showing the comet against the background stars.

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Stacked images of comet C/2025 R2 Swan: The 143 FITS images were comet aligned in Pixinsight to produce a stacked image of the comet with both normal and starless versions produced using StarXterminator to remove the stars.

Images of the Sun montage using a Chromospheric Quark: On the 20th October Various captures were taken of the Sun from Alentejo Portugal using a 6" refractor with a Chromospheric Quark attached (see equipment image taken during captures). The various data sets were stacked in Autostakkert!4, wavelet processed in Registax with further post processing carried out in Pixinsight's solar toolbox and Adobe Photoshop to create the montage.

Chris Bowden