Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise
by JackDesBwa 2020-07-19 19:55
C/2020 F3 Neowise is a retrograde comet discovered a few months ago which is currently visible to the naked eye. Despite the clouds, we can clearly see the constellation Ursa Major, and in particular its "Big Dipper"/"Plough" part easy to identify.
The clouds are lit by parasitic light of the nearby villages while the ground is lit by a flashlight. The photograph was taken with a moderately high gain (ISO 800) with low light, so that it looked noisy. A heavy (not subtle) filter was applied to reduce the noise and since the sky is at the infinity, the two sides were merged to avoid rivalries caused by the flickering of the low light stars diffracted by turbulent atmosphere. A satellite let a straight line mark by passing in the field during the 6s of the sensor exposition. On this photograph, the second tail is barely visible.
-- 2020-07-19, LX15 manual sync
Comments
Timo 2020-07-25 22:51
This is a fantastic image. It's better than many published images I have seen. I had no luck at all because of the Sony a5100's inability to hold focus at infinity (or perhaps I just don't know the trick to it).
JackDesBwa 2020-07-21 15:26
The comet is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, but only in quite low light environment. We had to wait for the sky to darken a lot before we started to see it. Binoculars and telescopes help to have a clearer image of course.
The photos were taken with a large diaphragm (F/1.4), moderately long exposure (6s) and moderately high gain (ISO 800, boosted digitally again afterwards) so that it does not look very dark, but several people needed a lamp to walk there and the milky way was clearly visible in the sky.
I wish I had a more interesting foreground, but at least the clouds give special graphical dynamism. I have some few other shots from the same place that can help to improve the photograph without the heavy bilateral filter, but not sure I will have the courage to work on it.
TBentz 2020-07-20 23:09
Jack, I appreciate what you did here to bring us a stereo shot of the comet. Because the sky is at infinity, you had to provide some kind of 3D detail by illuminating the field and hay bale. I was under the impression that the comet was hard to see with the naked eye - or ordinary camera. I thought one needed binoculars to see it. But this photo proves otherwise. Congratulations! (Oh, by the way, that satellite smear is very easily removed in Photoshop....I downloaded the photo and tried it. It works.)