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Object:
 Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)
Date(s):
 12 Jan 2015
Location:
 Rancho Hidalgo, NM
Telescope:
 Takahashi TOA-130 at f/7
Mount:
 CGE mount
Camera:
 SBIG ST-4000CM
Single-Shot Color:
 YES
Luminance:
Stack of six 5-minute exposures - bin 1
Comments:

Not my best work... High humidity made later images very poor due to dew on the telescope objective lens... Need more stacked images to do a decent job. Also a wider field would help but not much I can do about that from 270 miles away. :-)

I was guiding these images on a star. The comet moves slightly in 5 minutes. Shorter exposure times with a larger scope with an f/ratio of f/2 or so would give MUCH better comet tail results.

For color correction, I use one of the original images, split it into RGB and then use eXcalibrator to determine the color correction factors. I apply those factors to color correct the image(s).

Received questions regarding how to stack images without causing star trails. I used the process described by Bernhard Hubl in this PDF file:

http://www.astrophoton.com/tips/comet_images.pdf

I originally accidentally posted a non-stacked image that I thought I had stacked. Fooled myself. The image was a single 5 minute exposure. Here is that image for comparison so that you can see that stacking gives a more resolved comet tail: