C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)

[James Screech]

About 23:00 BST last night (11/07/2020).
Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, Canon 7D Tamron 200-600 at 200mm, f5, ISO800 on a fixed tripod.

[Dr Neil Havard]

I got a few photos around 11.30 pm and again just before 3 am.  The proper motion of the comet is visible by comparing the position of a star near the tail in just a few hours.

[Dr Neil Havard]

Second Photo around 3 hours later

[David Swan]

I wanted to enjoy the comet through binos – and I did, so I didn’t take the scope out. But on getting home I noticed the comet was accessible from my yard. Here’s a single 500ms frame taken with the Hyperstar. A very bright sky at 0247 BST, but you can nonetheless make out the bifurcation of the tail clearly (no calibration performed – I would need a new set of calibr frames for these settings!)

[Peter Meadows]

As an experiment I tried to image the comet through an ETX 105 with a Canon D550 (12th July 2020 at 01:54UT).  As there was no tracking, I had to keep the exposure short at 2s and used a high ISO at 6400.  It does show some structure, a bit like, but not a good as, Paul Able’s drawing from yesterday at https://britastro.org/node/23148.

[Mr Simon Francis Dawes]

Here are a couple of time lapse images of the comet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVRDDABx7s&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdoG84oF4vs&feature=youtu.be

Does anyone know how to calibrate RAW files and save as RAW or tif? All my software saves them as FITS which are no good for creating time-lapse videos. Or how to batch convert fits to tiff or jpg?

[David Swan]

I’m assuming you are looking for freeware or something not too expensive. Have a look at PIPP.

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

Maxim does this sort of thing, but it is expensive.

[Nick James]

I use dcraw, Imagemagick and ffmpeg under Linux for batch manipulation of images including camera raws and generation of videos. Not sure if they are available in the Windows world. 

[James Lancashire]

Observed from 21:15-21:45 UT. Strong twilight. Comet picked up in 15x70B at 21:25 UT.
Naked eye with averted vision at end, despite very low altitude. Decent tail ~2deg.
Mag and coma estimates impossible due to strong twilight and no comp stars.
Glad to have photo. Taken at 21:45 UT. 50mm f/5.6 6s ISO 400.

[Stewart Moore]

Third consecutive night that comet was visible.  2020 July 12/13 (Sunday night) it is still easy naked eye but tail seemed shorter tonight but also possibly broader.  Tail more like 3 deg in 10x50s.  Possibly also fainter overall but some haze in NNE so difficult to be sure.  Moon seemed much more of a problem tonight (Sunday night) than on Saturday night although Milky Way still naked eye through Cygnus.  Still a great sight and enjoyed showing it to a neighbour. Observed from 00:15 to 01:30UT.

[Martin Mobberley]

Similar experience to Stewart. Third consecutive night. Observed before midnight UT to take the pics just before moonrise. Comet looked a bit weaker, but may have been poorer transparency, or even the sky glow from Bury St Edmunds (6 miles away) which is not far from the line of sight now…… Same procedure as before. Canon 300D + f/1.4 lens on a fixed tripod. 10 secs single frames and a 12 x 10sec stack… Observed with 10x50s as well. Could not see quite as much tail, possibly for the previously mentioned reasons…..haze, Bury St Eds glow…….  Grunting, bellowing animal of the previous night had gone….maybe someone shot it?

Martin

[Andrew Wellington]

My image from early Sunday morning shows the dust & ion tails and also hints of a red tail/region to the left of the blue ion tail. I’ve seen similar on a couple of photos on-line so it appears to be real and not a image processing artefact. Any ideas what this is?

Regard, Andy Wellington

PS, my first post on the BAA forum:)

[David Strange]

Beautiful image! I’m guessing it could be due to Na emission in the yellow?

https://britastro.org/node/23206

David

[Andrew Wellington]

Thanks David, it is most likely the Na line.

[David C Rayment]

Beautiful comet.  Managed to photograph it from a field in Wickford Essex on July 12.  First attempt.  The pic was shot with a 200mm f4 attached to a Nikon 750 set to 200 f4 for 3 seconds. ISO 400.  02.31 UT

[Nick James]

Hi Andy, Welcome to the forum. That looks like a fantastic image. Could you post a higher resolution version please with technical details (when, where, exposure, equipment, field of view etc.). You can submit it to the Comet Section via cometobs@britastro.org. Details of how to submit are here.  Thanks.

[Robin Leadbeater]

There has been some discussions about this reddish tail on Cloudy Nights.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/716780-comet-neowise-high-resolution-spectrum/?p=10332533

I wondered about sodium but the neutral sodium tail seen with Hale Bopp fell between the dust and ion tails rather than at a larger angle as here. I am wondering if it could be from NH2, the emission bands of which fall in the red region of the spectrum. Perhaps some mechanism separating ions by molecular weight, CN, C2 being heavier ?

Robin

[Mr Simon Francis Dawes]

Ah – I have PIPP didn’t realise it did this 🙂 thanks!

[Mr Simon Francis Dawes]

Thanks I’ll give them a go, ffmeg I’ve used for video, I didn’t realise it handled FITS as well.

[Mr Simon Francis Dawes]

Quick 10s image of teh comet at Reculver Towers last night.

Full image here https://britastro.org/node/23239

Simon

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