Author Archives: momdude

I think I said two nights ago that I was probably done trying to take pictures of Comet NEOWISE F3 since it was starting to fade significantly (it still is) and being a low-contrast object that has its light spread out across the tail and comet head, it was difficult to photograph well from my front yard given all of the street lights and lights from the neighbors’ houses (which are still on).

I was wrong.

The key is that the obvious finally clicked for me tonight and I realized that I was still thinking like the comet was way down near the horizon and I had to see it from the front yard just before it set. But it’s now moved way up by the bowl of the Big Dipper, so maybe I could see it from my back yard? Where the house and trees that would have blocked seeing the comet when it was near the horizon now will block the light from all of the streetlights and neighbors’ porches. Maybe?

Yes, indeedy, that works like a charm. With one little non-insurmountable problem.

It’s lovely and all, but it causes its own share of light pollution. Tonight was tolerable but in a week it will be full and freakishly bright, while the comet will continue to fade, so that will become problematic. But a problem for another night.

A 20-second exposure at 70mm shows where it is. It’s definitely dimmer by a lot, but the green color is still evident.

But without the street lights in view, I can go to a 30-second exposure and bring out more detail and color. The stars are no longer pinpoints, “trailing” as the Earth moves. The next step would be to mount the camera on my telescope’s equitorial mount so that it spins the camera “backward” at exactly the same rate as the Earth rotates “forward” – maybe I can try that later.

Zooming in to 300mm, a 4-second exposure keeps the trailing to a minimum and the green color really pops, but you don’t see much of the tail.

Zoomed in part way at 114mm, a 25-second exposure starts to bring out the tail.

Finally, zooming in to 300mm and taking a 30 second exposure, the comet’s head is trailed but really shows it’s green color, while the tail is smeared due to trailing, but has more detail showing.

Finally, because I remembered an old trick used by earlier astronomers when searching for comets and asteroids on photographic plates, I inverted the image from black to white and I enhanced the contrast in Photoshop. Now that tail is really obvious!

Not bad for haven called it quits 48 hours ago!

Tonight’s the night that Comet NEOWISE F3 is closest to Earth. This is not to say that it’s actually really close at all (approximately 64,300,000 miles), but it is the closest it will come as it heads back out to the dim, cold, empty regions of the solar system.

But first, before it gets dark, the monthly cycle has rolled around and the three-day-old crescent moon is back in our skies.

As always, the crescent Moon is a high dynamic range object. The illuminated crescent is quite bright, to to capture it you need a short exposure (1/25 second), but doing so makes it hard to see the palm trees that it was sharing that spot of sky with – perhaps if you have a good, high contrast monitor you can see their faint silhouettes.

Shoot a two-second exposure and the darkened face of the moon starts to come out due to Earthshine, sunlight reflected off of the Earth, onto the Moon, and then back to us. You can also start to see the brighter stars, as well as the aforementioned palm tree silhouettes. But the illuminated portion of the Moon is completely overexposed.

Finally, if you wait until about 21:45 and shoot a 15-second exposure, you’ll catch the comet with a distinct green color showing around the head, but not as much tail visible in the hazy, light-polluted skies of Los Angeles.

That’s the big difference in location – you’ll notice in all of the really fantastic comet photos taken from dark sky locations, the sky is almost jet black and a ton of detail can be seen in the tail, including the ion tail which is split off from the dust tail. Here in the big city, a long exposure just starts to turn everything grey.

So while I’ll still be going out and watching the comet, I don’t anticipate too many more photos, if any, unless something dramatic happens. “Dramatic” could include getting my telescope cleaned and repaired, getting the chance to drive for a few hours to get off to a dark sky location, or both.

The odds of either or both happening are…astronomical!

But the comet is still visible easily with binoculars, even from a city with all of its lights, and in a dark sky it’s still (barely) a naked eye object, so if you haven’t seen it yet, take your shot!

I was pretty sure for a while that I wouldn’t be seeing the comet tonight. I’ve at least gone out and looked at it for a few minutes every night for more than a week now, but near sunset it was looking marginal.

Pretty – I like clouds and sunsets – but marginal for comet watching.

It’s okay if I didn’t see the comet again tonight. Sometimes we can all use a night apart.

With the comet getting higher in the sky by 3° or more per day, I knew that it would be up for a longer time after full dark every night, so missing it tonight wouldn’t be the end of the world by any means.

I was ready to write it off, not even bother to look later when it got dark.

Yeah. RIGHT!

By 22:00 it was completely dark, almost two hours after sunset, and the skies were again totally cloudless. The comet was even higher than it had been when I was taking pictures at 21:00 to 21:20 the other night. It’s nice and high, actually above that big pine tree across the street and above those power lines. It’s still remarkably easy to see, given that comets normally fade fairly quickly. This one is hanging on.

It’s barely visible to the naked eye still here in the light-polluted Los Angeles metro area, but still an easy target with the binoculars. It took me a minute or two, but only because I didn’t realize how high it was now. I was scanning the horizon given the hour, but it was up above those wires!

If you’ve got binoculars of any kind, don’t give up if you haven’t seen it yet or it’s been cloudy. You’ve probably got at least a week more, maybe two.

Happy Hunting!