Comet NEOWISE Timelapse over Las Vegas, NV

[SiriusDoggy]

As I'm sure everyone is aware, Comet NEOWISE has passed into the evening sky now and survived its trip near the Sun. I haven't made it out to a dark sky location with the scope yet because our daytime temps have been hovering around 115°(46°c) and even at sunset it's still around 105°(40.5°c) so setting up all the gear will be brutal. I did decide to see if I could capture it with a simple DSLR/tripod rig from my home balcony and even though I couldn't make it out naked eye, it did show up on the camera. I wish now I had let the camera shoot longer, at least another 30 minutes, but I really didn't think I had captured anything until I loaded the files on the computer.
You might also notice a fairly smooth transition from day to night, well I was using an old device that I bought around 2010 called the Little Bramper. It's a bulb ramping device that steadily adjust your shutter speeds and compensates for ISO changes. The only limitation I see so far is that its shortest exposure is 34ms. That means that even at ISO50, f2.8 the sun would completely blow out the images. I had to wait until the sun set behind the mountains to begin the day to night timelapse. This timelapse started at ISO50, 34ms and ended at ISO400, 1.5 seconds. Pretty smooth transitions!  Let me know what you think.

Edited July 15, 2020 by SiriusDoggy

[Ouroboros]

@SiriusDoggy  Your YouTube link doesn’t seem to work. 

[SiriusDoggy]

18 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

@SiriusDoggy  Your YouTube link doesn’t seem to work. 

Thanks Quroboros. I think it's fixed now.

[Ouroboros]

@SiriusDoggyThose temperatures sound seriously unbearable. Is that dry or humid heat? I die anything much above very low 30’s.  Nice movie though. Yeah, pity it didn’t run longer. I’m intrigued by the Little Bramper. 

[SiriusDoggy]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

@SiriusDoggyThose temperatures sound seriously unbearable. Is that dry or humid heat? I die anything much above very low 30’s.  Nice movie though. Yeah, pity it didn’t run longer. I’m intrigued by the Little Bramper. 

It's very, very dry. One day earlier this week the humidity was 4%. Our record a few years ago was .3% I think it's around 7% today.

Yeah, The Little Bramper was a gadget that made the rounds about 8-10 years ago. It was sold as sort of a kit with just the circuitboard and keypad and you had to provide a box for it to hold the parts and battery holder. I bought it a long time ago and fooled around with it for a while and never seemed to be able to get it to work right. Now that I've been unemployed, I've been cleaning up and ran across it in a drawer. And with plenty of time to fool around with it, I think I've figured it out. At some point I may make a little how to video of it in use. 

[Ouroboros]

Sounds interesting. 

4%!  It’s 55% here and a slightly underwhelming 17.5° on a dreary and cloudy “summer’s” evening in good old Britain.