Having had earlier attempts to capture the comet spoiled by winter storms and brightly moonlit, light-polluted city skies, it was thankfully very clear last night so I headed out into the countryside to a secluded spot with Bortle 5 skies (vs. the Bortle 8 at home). As I was using a star tracker, I had to track the stars and hope to be able to separate out the comet when post-processing the sequence of 66 images I captured. I am still working on that but in the meantime I created this shot using 6 shots taken at the beginning of the sequence; the comet movement during this set of images was minimal so post-processing for it was simpler.

To minimize effects of comet movement during each exposure and to limit how over-exposed Mars would be, I was taking 30 second shots at ISO 3200.

Although the comet is not as spectacular as in other images people have shared online, it is also far dimmer now and without the benefits of an equatorial mount for much longer exposures, this is pretty close to how good I had hoped it would be. Seeing the comet and Mars in a single frame is pretty incredible.

Skywatcher Evostar 72ED, 0.85x focal reducer, Nikon D750 (set to DX), Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2, Radion tripod

6 frames from 66 lights captured, processed with bias, flat and dark frames using Siril to register and stack, exported and adjusted for exposure, contrast, etc. using Lightroom