Comet Neowise

Thanks for the feedback Nigel.

I think it was probably due to the comet being much better (brighter) than initially expected. I follow Alyn Wallace's you tube channel as he does a good "what's in the night sky" at the start of each month and he also did not mention it... But he did cover it later in the month.

Looking at Andy's shot I think he has captured some of the ion tail....

Very tempted to try another shot tonight too as the sky here is clearing.

Good luck with your observations.

An overtweaked (different) shot hopefuly showing the ion tail;



It is there - just; looks much better on my PC monitor!

Yes it is a little more obvious after the tweaking... Don't think this showed up in any of the shots I took, had another go last night but the comet seem fainter now and the images I got last weekend are much better.

Quite spectacular folks.

Here's my take on it.

Showing the core.



And tweaked to show a faint ion tail.




I stacked 46 images - 1 second exposures at f/4.0 and ISO 3200 using the DA*300. Ideally I'd use Astrotracer and get 10 second exposures or something similar - that would allow a lot more detail to be extracted.

just recieved an email from PU? regarding an update I have asked for on Neowise. Have no recollection of doing this. Is this a hack?

These looks ace! Where I live the heading for the comet faces right at the airport and there's a little light pollution that way shall we say! Maybe I need to be less lazy and change location

And I went out again earlier - thankfully an old friend was able to get me motivated!




This is a stack of around 6 minutes worth of exposures at f/4 and 300mm. I also took a bunch of shots at 50mm but unfortunately they don't really show enough detail due to a very difficult gradient of light from the horizon.

I'm very pleased at the result!

I also spotted an extremely bright meteor that seemed to last ages in the sky, lots of other people saw that one judging by the Twitter reactions.

So it was finally a clear sky last night when we went to bed, but it was still too light. After a long day in the garden I was tired so decided to set my alarm to wake up after a couple of hours and go try see the comet, if not photograph it. Alarm went off, dragged my weary body from bed, peered out the window of the back bedroom to see... heavy clouds. No point in heading off to the somewhere dark then.
After all the crystal clear nights of spring this is proving very frustrating. I don't think I'll get to see it now, as it is fading and the weather forecast is shite.
Enjoying seeing everyon else's photos though!

That was well worth the effort Haris! A beautiful take.

Sorry that you look likely to miss it Gwyn .

Yesterday, after an utter failure earlier on (3.45 am!), went out last evening & snapped this:






K5, 100mm DFA Macro (!)
Stack of 10 on Combine ZP.
Elements 11.

Thanks All, for the inspiration!

Roger.

Stellar, Haris. See what I did there?

I'm not surprised, it's a cracking shot.

It wasn't the ISS? - I assume it was it that went over me about 00:10 (and maybe again 90 mins later) I managed to get a grab shot as I was setting up to try and get Jupiter.

ISS transits: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/view.cfm?country=United_Kingdom®ion...

I'm not surprised, it's a cracking shot.

It wasn't the ISS? - I assume it was it that went over me about 00:10 (and maybe again 90 mins later) I managed to get a grab shot as I was setting up to try and get Jupiter.[/quote

I think we saw the ISS earlier along with a whole bunch of other minor satellites but the meteor was something else completely - it was very long lasting even after an initial green flash where it hit the atmosphere. Extremely bright too.

There's a thread on the FB group Aurora Hunters UK with some shots of it - it happened around 1.15am.

Also surprisingly, my dad was out looking at the comet with some binos when he spotted it too! Considering me and my brothers were a few miles away it was a lovely coincidence.

Some nice captures in this thread - I've not caught a glimpse (yet) - might have a bash towards the end of the week if it's still around :