Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) over a ripening canola field near home in southern Alberta, on the night of July 15-16, 2020. Light pollution from a nearby gas plant reflecting off low clouds adds the yellow at right. This is a blend of a stack of six 2-minute exposures at ISO 3200 and f/5.6 to smooth noise, provide depth of field, and bring out the colours of the canola, blended with a single short 15-second exposure of the sky at f/2.8 and ISO 1600, all with the 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII camera.
A selfie observing Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) with binoculars on the dark moonless night of July 14/15, 2020 from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. A faint aurora colours the sky green and magenta. The faint blue ion tail of the comet is visible in addition to its brighter dust tail. The ground is illuminated by starlight and aurora light only. This is a blend of 6 exposures stacked for the ground (except me) to smooth noise, and one exposure for the sky and me, all 13 seconds at f/2.5 with the 35mm lens and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 6400. Topazs DeNoise AI applied.
A close-up of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) on the night of July 14/15, 2020 with a 135mm telephoto lens, and cropped in somewhat. But the field is about 10° high and the white dust and blue ion tails extend across the frame and beyond it. Some of the banding structure in the dust tail is visible. VIsually in binoculars the ion tail was barely visible with a little averted imagination but the dust tail easily extended about two binocular fields, so about 12 °. This is a stack of nine 1-minute exposures with the 135mm Canon lens wide-open at f/2 and Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800. The camera was on the iOptron SkyGuider Pro tracker tracking the stars not the comet. Yes, the comet will have moved slightly against the background stars over the few minutes of the capture, but not enough to significantly blur detail at this image scale. I shot this about 12:45 am on July 15, 2020 from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, latitude 51° N. The comet head was about 9° above the northern horizon. The Sun was 15° below the horizon, so still not astronomically dark. The comet was also low in the north and so I have added brightness and color adjustments with gradient masks to even out the background, as the sky was brighter toward the horizon at the bottom, plus the sky also had some faint aurora adding magenta casts toward the bottom. Automatic gradient removal didn’t do a good job in this case. Plus despite being the middle of the night the sky was still deep blue this low to the north due to perpetual summer twilight. But I’ve retained that sky tint. Stacked and aligned in Photoshop.
