Comet NEOWISE - My First Comet!

Recently it’s been impossible for me to be on Twitter without being inundated with stunning pictures of the newly discovered comet NEOWISE. Some people have taken truly incredible photos but I wanted to try for myself, I’ve never seen a comet before!

For the last few days NEOWISE has been an early morning view, and with two small kids I couldn’t drag myself out of bed. Last night NEOWISE finally became more of an evening target, so I found a large open field in my town that allowed me to see very low to the northwest horizon. I was set up around 8:15pm, but it wasn’t really dark enough until about 9-9:45pm to really see the comet.

The comet shows up really nicely in my photos, but it was still difficult to see by eye. Know where it was I could just barely make out a fuzzy line near the horizon. You’d absolutely never see it if you weren’t looking for it.

After some experimentation I settled on ISO 1600, f/5.6, and a 20 second exposure time. Some small brightness, contrast, and color tweaks were done in darktable.

The comet was slightly smaller than I anticipated and I think I might be able to use the telescope to get a zoomed in view. I don’t think the entire tail will fit into the view that way, but the telescope should also make it a bit brighter than my camera can make out alone. If the weather holds out I’ll try to drag the telescope out to this field!