Comet Neowise

[ampleamp]

The clouds cleared around midnight for me so I dragged myself outside and I admit it was a struggle. My rebuilt obs has no NE view due to trees so I found a tripod, my old Nikon dslr and a set of binoculars and set to find Neowise. I spent the first hour messing with different setting on Capella as I still couldn't see anything even from an elevated position the garden to find a gap in the trees. I used the remaining time to view Jupiter, Saturn, noctiluscent clouds, even the ISS sped over, and the sky was improving all the time. With my bias being towards imaging it was lovely to use my eyes for a change. I was like a kid when the comet came into view and those first few seconds after I found it were just fabulous - happily nobody saw this 😀. Can't wait for this comet to rise up the sky so I can use my scopes on a tracking mount. 
 

The images attached are some fairly rough views of just three seconds (and still enough star movement) so at 300mm fl a tracking mount is definitely required. I didn't change anything for the lightening sky and with the exception of a couple of wider shots at 70mm fl, all images were taken between 0315 and 0330 at ISO 1600, f5.6, focal length 300mm and all 3". The gif is made from 80x3" jpg over aroind 7 minutes so I could show the family the travel. I would love to get better at imaging this but for a manual clunk-click approach I am pretty pleased. I truly enjoyed the night and am kicking myself for nearly not being sufficiently motivated in the first place. 

Edited July 11, 2020 by ampleamp

[Pete Presland]

Beautiful captures.