Spotting NEOWISE

Got out the last couple of evenings to get some photos of Comet NEOWISE before it goes away for the next ~6700 years.

The comet itself was pretty easy to spot. After about 9PM EDT, the sky was dark enough for me to see the brighter stars. Found the Big Dipper and looked down toward the horizon. I wasn’t able to see it with the naked eye where I was (too much light pollution), but it was pretty easy to capture with my camera using a 5s exposure.

Captured these (out of a bunch) with my 18-55 mm lens using a 5s exposure at 1600 ISO. My camera is pretty noisy at high ISO and there are a few artifacts, but the big dipper and the comet are pretty easy to see.

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The next evening I went back out with my 18-200 mm lens to get a few more shots. Stayed with a 5s exposure and went with 800 ISO to reduce the noise a bit. These shots turned out a little better.

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Zooming in at 200 mm gives a nice image of the comet and its tail.

Have a bunch of images that I took that I need to stack together, which should make for some pretty nice images. That will have to wait until later when I have more time.