Neowise from Spokane

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Finally, we have clear weather, and I took my EOS R out and set it up to try and find Neowise in the evening. With the naked eye, its barely visible as long as you know where it is, and at night, there is no beautiful mountains or other geography to add for accent. Then, my 100-400L with a 1.4X TC required a ISO 32000 to 40,000 with a 1.0 or 0.5 sec shutter speed. I did not rig a remote release, so my pushing the shutter button ruined many tries. I'll use my cell phone for a remote next time.

In any event, its a first try, and with a huge amount of NR, I managed a photo that looked decent. This with my EOS R, EF 100-400mm + 1.4X TC at f/8, ISO 3200 1 sec exposure.

 

[Joules]

Great shot! At what time did you take it? If it wasn't so late in the night, I would have tried my luck as well.

I wonder, can you see the comet's movement over the course of these shots?

 

[Maximilian]

Thanks for sharing!
You lucky one, I don't have the time to get to a dark place and from where I live I couldn't see it yet!

... I did not rig a remote release, so my pushing the shutter button ruined many tries. I'll use my cell phone for a remote next time. ...

Didn't you use the delayed shutter release? 2 or 10s whatever is possible to keep subject centered.
That's what I do, if no remote is available.

 

[Click]

WOW. Great shot.

 

[SteveC]

Reminds me a bit of Hyakutake, which was much brighter and moved perceptibly in minutes.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Thanks for sharing!
You lucky one, I don't have the time to get to a dark place and from where I live I couldn't see it yet!


Didn't you use the delayed shutter release? 2 or 10s whatever is possible to keep subject centered.
That's what I do, if no remote is available.

I did not think of the shutter delay. It was not well planned, since I didn't even know if I'd be able to see the comet. This was the third time I've looked, the other two times we had heavy clouds.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Great shot! At what time did you take it? If it wasn't so late in the night, I would have tried my luck as well.

I wonder, can you see the comet's movement over the course of these shots?

The metadata says 10:12 pm. I started about 9:30 but there was too much skylight.

 

[Maximilian]

I did not think of the shutter delay. It was not well planned...

Hey! Thank you, that at least once I could help you and not only the other way 'round (which I always apprechiate)

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

A shot at 140mm, you can see that its not easy to spot. I've enhanced the contrast and pulled down blacks to make it more visible, it was pretty hard to see without the camera or binoculars.

 

[PCM-madison]

NEOWISE over Madison, WI, 07/13/20 ~10pm, 70mm, F3.2, 20sec, ISO 200.

 

[Click]

Very nice shot, PMC-madison.

 

[fentiger]

here's one i done this evening
taken with a low resolution 1DX2 with 70-200mk2 @110 mm

 

[Click]

Nicely done, Rodney.

 

[privatebydesign]

Well I'm in central Florida so comparatively low Latitude with pretty bad light pollution, but I enjoy a challenge so here is my effort from this evening. Lake Jessop, comet Neowise and a plane. Not a good shot but here it isn't visible to the naked eye so I was content.

1DX MkII, EF300mm f2.8 IS, 3.2sec, f2.8, iso 800

 

[Maximilian]

Gee! Three days of rain in a row - okay, it's really good for nature right now. Not one spot of blue sky.
I hope, it'll get better on the weekend.

Thanks to all of you for posting some motivation here

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I went out last night and tried using lower ISO settings, hoping to stack images to get lower noise and more detail. That was a flop on several levels, so I had to boost the exposure in Lightroom and ended up with more noise. I'm not experienced with astrophotography at all, I don't really want to learn, I have too many other interests.

There were wispy clouds that did not help.

Anyway, here is one of the photos.

 

[Maximilian]

Yesterday evening the sky was clear - the total opposite of the forecast.
So I rushed out to find C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). It was really difficult and with the naked eye it was almost invisible.
But I found it and I could get it.
It was much closer to the horizon than I expected. And it was sinking towards the horizon much faster than I expected.
I still have the city light pollution in the north and due to this and that it was only visible between 10 and 11:30 pm my tries on it were very poor.
It was really difficult to find focus and because of the rush I did forget to recalibrate my cam sensor, so I found a lot of dead pixels in the dark sky.
Here are my two best but still poor shots. Less than 2 min between them so you can see how fast it was moving.

5D3+100-400LII+1.4x, @560mm, full manual, 2.5s, f/11, ISO3200, no cropping, full pic but downsampled (for cropping the focus was too poor)
Taken at about 22:40 CEST

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Yesterday evening the sky was clear - the total opposite of the forecast.
So I rushed out to find C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). It was really difficult and with the naked eye it was almost invisible.
But I found it and I could get it.
It was much closer to the horizon than I expected. And it was sinking towards the horizon much faster than I expected.
I still have the city light pollution in the north and due to this and that it was only visible between 10 and 11:30 pm my tries on it were very poor.
It was really difficult to find focus and because of the rush I did forget to recalibrate my cam sensor, so I found a lot of dead pixels in the dark sky.
Here are my two best but still poor shots. Less than 2 min between them so you can see how fast it was moving.

5D3+100-400LII+1.4x, @560mm, full manual, 2.5s, f/11, ISO3200, no cropping, full pic but downsampled (for cropping the focus was too poor)
Taken at about 22:40 CEST

Yes, it gets dimmer each day, and tougher to photograph. My R will AF, but I use manual focus on it. I think that My ISO setting was too high in camera, I need to try a wide range of ISO settings. Auto ISO gives 40,000. I've tried 1600 and 6400, I think 12,800 might work out better.


I did not try tonight, I took a look at the northwest about 7 pm and it was covered by a big black cloud that was not moving.

 

[Maximilian]

Yes, it gets dimmer each day, and tougher to photograph. ...

I am just glad that I could see it with my own two eyes. To make a decent pic is the icing here.
The next few days it'll get slightly upwards so further away from the light pollution.
Hopefully it'll keep its magnitude some time.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I see it dimming each night. I could barely see it tonight, and it was clear and fairly high in the sky. It loses brightness as it moves away from the sun. I think this is my last photo attempt, its beyond the ability of my skills and my equipment. I could certainly do better ifI knew more about what I'm trying to do.