Comet C/2020 (F3) NEOWISE from Wednesday evening. From the side of Highway 10 at an entrance to the Maumelle River WMA. This was a single 4 second image at f/4 with a 50mm lens on my Canon 800D at ISO 800. In my 10×42 binoculars, I could see a tail stretching about 3 degrees or six times the width of the Moon. This was taken at about 9:30 PM. It was directly below the Big Dipper tonight and should get higher in the evening sky for a while. Go see it.
I got up at 3:30 and decided to pursue the new Comet NEOWISE aka C/2020 F3). I remembered that the nature trail behind Audubon Arkansas has a hill with a nice view and would be accessible. I decided to ask forgiveness later as no permission would be forthcoming at 3:30 AM. My images aren’t as good as many you have already seen but here we have 28 frames at 3 per second. Each was 4.3 seconds long with my 50mm f/1.8 lens at ISO 800. The star at the top is Menkalinan, the one at the right Mahasim. The comet was visible to the unaided eye once located with binoculars and the tail was about 1.5 degrees long in my 10×42 binoculars.
You’ve already seen plenty of eclipse shots, maybe taken some of your own, here are some of mine. The video is made of of 29 frames taken 5 minutes apart from just before the start of the partial eclipse to about the end of totality when my battery ran down. The Moon appears to rotate as my alt-az mount turned. The single frame shows some stars that came out as we went from Moon light obliterating everything to sixth magnitude stars visible. It was a cold but enjoyable evening.
