I took this southwest of Bloomington, Indiana on October 16, 2024, overlooking a harvested cornfield and autumn trees.
While the rising Moon made it hard to see by unaided eye, it had an unexpected benefit: it illuminated the autumn trees and field very nicely, and bright reds and golds were visible in even short exposures. This integration combines 34 x 8" untracked exposures at ISO 1600 in a run-of-the-mill Nikon kit lens at 55m and f/5.6.
After stacking in Sequator, I worked in Photoshop to bring the autumn colors up to my in-person experience, and increased contrast a bit to better show how long this dust tail really is! Also note the anti-tail. Minor denoising with Topaz.
This was actually not the main image I had planned! I grabbed the lens and camera on a lark, after mostly toting an 80mm triplet along. But now, I'm far happier with this than the detailed capture (processing in progress). And in fact, this is the only time I've used this kit lens, since my normal aurora lens is too wide. You just never know!!
See also: close up view on the head and anti-tail:
https://www.astrobin.com/sa39bj/
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