Comet C/2022 E3 leaving the solar system

Clouds, clouds, clouds, and then more clouds. But on February 8th when it looked like another cloudy night, there was a break between a cloud deck to the west and a cold front that just passed to the east giving me about 6 hours of mostly clear skies. Since I was hoping to get some more images of this comet before it left for good (well, at least for another 50,000 years) I had to set up quickly and take the opportunity presented to me.

The optics were still not up to par - the stars at the edges and corners of the field were still showing some severe signs of coma and out of focus (as I mentioned in my previous post on January 31). This made the postprocessing a bit difficult, and I had to pull out a few tricks to get the subs to stack properly. 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) - February 8, 2023
William Optics ZenithStar 61;  ZWO ASI2600mm
2h57m total integration time

As anticipated, the comet had dimmed quite a bit and I was not able to get the ion tail to show clearly (may be due to some of the thin clouds that were still present and the fact that the moon was nearly full). If I stretch the image a bit more you can just make out the tail, but the quality of the overall image degrades a lot. So I decided to leave well enough alone.

Still waiting for that next best naked-eye comet to arrive. But this one was fun to follow and image.