Seeing Comet Neowise

Last night we went out to see Comet Neowise. We set up our cameras, got ready with our binoculars

and sure enough after sunset we saw what we thought was the comet. However the location of the supposed comet was not correct and so I doubted myself. I wondered if I had been confused, (not the first time), after all the comet should look like a fuzzy ball when first spotted. As ones eyes adjust the tail should appear and it would disappear in the west as the earth rotates.

A great horned owl flew up and landed near us as if to say this is my hunting ground so please leave. It finally flew away and later we saw it land on an porty-potty out on the golf course. It got darker and the stars appeared, Jupiter and Saturn rose over the Salt Range and we waited until we could see all the stars of the Big Dipper.

Renita kept scanning the sky with her binoculars and suddenly she said ," I see the fuzzy ball of the comet's nucleus"! It got darker still and sure enough even I could see it along with it's spectacular tail.

I started to take image after image and finally got my first ever image of Comet Neowise. The reason we hadn't seen it before is because it was way past my bedtime.

After taking quite a few images with our Cannon dslr camera, (any dslr camera should work), I put our camera away and sat down simply enjoying the sight of such beauty. Renita was nice and snug but I had to get out a blanket as I had dressed in just shorts and a tee shirt, (you would think someone who had lived in Wyoming for forty plus years would know better,, (our humidity here is about ten percent and as soon as the sun goes down it gets cold).

Later we returned home and our skies are so dark that we could see the comet from our patio. We also can see the Milky Way. Tonight we will go back out and take more images. How often do you get to see a bright comet? Clear skies

If you want to try imaging the Comet there are lots of good web pages, but this is what worked for us.

Put your camera on a tripod. Change from landscape, after you take a picture of the sunset, to the manual setting change the exposure to four seconds, and change the iso to 3200 and you are set. Change the focus from auto focus to manual!You can select these settings during the day and it ill not affect your taking normal pictures during the day or at sunset. Be sure to change the focus autofocus to manual and watching the screen focus, on the stars and snap away.

I actually got my first image at an iso of 1600 but you can change the iso, (iso is like the old asa when you used film), easily in the dark when you get the hang of it, (I practiced in the day time). Good luck!