Night of the Comet

It isn't too often that there is a naked eye comet in the sky but, as of now, comet NEOWISE is visible in the morning sky. There were three new comets that astronomers were tracking that could become bright enough to see but two of them, ATLAS and SWAN, broke up as they got close to the Sun and never got bright enough to be easy to see.

Comet NEOWISE however survived its swing around the Sun and actually became brighter than predicted. It is one of the brightest comets in the past 25 years. It was visible in the early morning about an hour before sunrise so Sunday morning I left my house at 3:45 am to try and get a look at it and maybe get some pictures. To see the comet you had to find a place that was dark and had an unobstructed view of the north east horizon. This meant I had to drive some where to see it. I ended up by the lake in the Assumpink which, despite the road closed signs, was not really closed.

It took me a few minutes to find the best place to see the comet. It was just visible to the naked eye and got easier to see as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Through binoculars it was very bright and it was easy to see the full tail. I set up my camera up on a tripod and took a couple of long exposure pictures. I couldn't really see how well the picture turned out until I got home but if you look at the left middle of the pictures above you can clearly see the comet.(Click on the pictures themselves to get a full screen view)

In one of the pictures I got lucky and caught a meteor streak just to the right of the tree.

 I did zoom in to the comet to get a close up view where you can better see the nucleus and tail.

 I really don't have the best equipment to get pictures like the ones that are shown here but am happy with what I was able to produce with my Canon sx740.

While I was out by the lake I also used the 40x zoom to get a few pics of the Moon which weren't bad. Here is one of my better ones.

Any since I was up early I got a picture of the sunrise.

I really didn't want to get up early on this Sunday since it is one of the few days I can sleep late but it was worth it to get a glimpse of the comet.

In about a week the comet might be visible an hour after sunset so if you want to try and find it here is a link to a Sky and Telescope article on how to find it in the sky. There is no guarantee, however, that it will still be bright enough to see in a week but if it is I will definitely go out and try and get some more pictures.