2020f3 20200712 0115 cnuttall

Please find attached two pastel drawings I made of 2020 f3 NEOWISE on the 12th July 2020.

I observed for 45 minutes from 02:15 to 03:00 bst (01:15 - 02:00 ut), naked eye and tripod-mounted 15 x 70mm binoculars,

The naked eye view of this comet in a dark sky was amazing. Easily seen with direct vision, a bright coma and a tail about 2° long pointing upwards from the horizon. The colour to the naked eye is yellow to amber.

In binoculars the tail appears to have two origins, it's almost as though there were two jets coming from the nucleus with a darker lane between them. The eastern side of the tail is the longest and was curved, the western side was straighter and shorter.

The stars in my close-up sketch are shown at 01:15 ut. By 02:00 the motion of the comet had carried the star in the middle of the tail out of the right-hand side;

 After 45 minutes of observation the sky was beginning to get light. The comet was still visible with the naked eye, but in binoculars the tail was now only about 1 degree long, so I stopped observing and took in the scene with the other planets in a line across the sky.