Anyone here ever tried scanning a 35mm slide to look for a faint comet?

[Up2Late]

I'm in the process of scanning a lot of old slides and negatives (most are not Astronomy shots) and just scanned a slide I took in 1985 when Halley's Comet made it's last return, but without much luck.

I have a fairly good scanner (it goes up to 2400dpi for slides and Negatives) and a few fairly good slides that I shot on Kodachrome 64, but when scanning an almost black slide, I get a lot of random noise in the scan.

Any advice?

I don't know if I actually got it on film, because I couldn't really see it with the naked eye, I just shot where it was supposed to be (near Sagittarius), but is there a technique to scan an process it which yields the best results to see if I did get it?

[liberal N proud]

1. I have had experience with scanning old 35mm slided and negatives

on a Cannon Scanner.
You need high resolution which will boost the file size but required for good transfer.
Then you need a good tool to clean up the picture, there is some fading or degrading that takes place over time.
I have ArcSoft PhotoStudio but that is not necessarily the best. A good PhotoShop program would be the best bet for cleanup.

[Occulus]

2. The only thing I can think of relates to digital photo editing

but does your scanner software have the ability to adjust the levels of the scanned image's shadows, midtones, and so on? I'm not talking about RGB values, but shadow and lighting values.

I don't know if scanner software in general does that, since I don't have one and haven't for a long time. It's about the only thing I can think of.

[Up2Late]

3. Yes, It does have those adjustments...

...that's mainly the kind of advice I'm hoping for.

Advice like, should I push the levels all the way to the extremes (Highest contrast) or try to keep it as flat as possible (low contrast) to make it easier to find any trace of the comet once I start fiddling with the scan in Photoshop.