There’s nothing like a great comet.

During July of 2020, the greatest comet of my lifetime graced our Northern Skies.  I’ve not had the chance to image a comet in many, many years, and this was a massive learning experience.

Neowise first appeared in the wee hours of the morning, just prior to dawn.  It was spectacular then, however, hard to image, as it was low on the horizon until an hour or so before dawn, and quickly disappeared into the morning light, as per the shot below, taken on July 13th around 4am:

Transition to the Evening

Within a few days, Neowise became visible in the evenings, and the real fun of learning to image a comet began.  This shot, from the 16th of July is made up of 147 4 second shots at ISO 3200 on a Canon DSLR, with a 100mm lens.

A week or so later,I was fortunate enough to spend time at a friend’s cottage with very dark skies on Black Lake, near Perth, Ontario.  This is a stack of 3 15 second wide-angle shots on a Canon 6D DSLR as the comet set in the evening.

I was able to get a fun time lapse a few days later, which you can watch below:

The most impressive shots were to come the same night as the timelapse,  from the same location, but with my telescope, and my first ever attempt at LRGB imaging of a comet.  Not an easy task at all – this is a 50 minute shot (20:10:10:10) with my telescope at 384mm F 4.8, and a dedicated ZWO 1600-pro astro camera.