Bright Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) rising in the northeast into the dawn sky on July 5, 2020, visible here as the small spot left of centre in the bright twilight. The northeast sky was also filled with noctilucent clouds (NLCs) that grew even more extensive this morning as the Sun angle below the horizon decreased and the NLCs lit up more to cover much of the sky. Venus is bright to the right, with the Pleiades star cluster above Venus. Capella is the bright star at top left. The comet is in a line directly down from Capella and just above the orange band of twilight. And as if that were not enough, the International Space Station flew over and away to the east in the scene here to the right of Venus, fading as it flew away. In all, this was one of the most amazing morning sky scenes I have seen. This was from home in Alberta at about 4:00 am MDT under very clear skies. The comet had passed perihelion only a few days eariler and was emerging here into the dawn sky. This is a panorama of 4 segments at 1.6 seconds each with the 50mm Sigma lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
A train of Starlinks on April 18, 2020, from the 5 batch launched a month earlier on March 18, 2020, in procession across the south in the darkening twilight, from home in Alberta. This is one frame from 100 shot this evening as they appeared in a long train over more than an hour. Many were magnitude +1. However, two nights later most appeared 2 t 3 magnitudes fainter and were hard to photograph and, except for a few, were not easy to pick out to the naked eye. An attempt to record a time-lapse on April 20 didn’t record many. This is a single 4-second exposure at f/2.2 with the 14mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.
