Paul Klauninger’s image of Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS as its core began fragmenting in April 2020 took our Photo of the Week May 22, 2020.

“Two major fragments (a and b) are clearly seen,” he wrote in an email. “Two lesser fragments (c and d) are trailing closely behind to the left of the major fragments as well as a couple of possible debris clouds further along in the tail. To avoid trailing, the comet and stars were processed separately and then merged.”

Klauninger took the picture April 17, 2020 from Lanark Highlands, Ontario. He said he used an 11-inch Celestron EdgeHD, focal ratio of f/10, and took 33 minutes total of exposure using LRGB filters.

The honourable mention this week goes to Jared Walls, near Tofield, Alberta.

Walls wrote that this image was one of his early attempts at a tracked Milky Way photo. He said he took the picture May 5, 2019 using a Sony A6000 with an Samyang 12mm f/2 lens set at f/2.8.

He said the stars were tracked using a barn door tracker (Nyx Tracker) and blended with the foreground in Photoshop. He had taken 10 exposures at 120 seconds each for the stars, and three exposures at 120 seconds each for the foreground.

“The details that can be captured with tracking/stacking really blew me away and got me even more hooked on astrophotography!” he wrote.