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 start 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. In all, this was one of the most amazing morning sky scenes I have seen. What’s more, just after I took this series, the International Space Station flew over. Another image captures that scene. This was from home in Alberta at about 3:57 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.
Bright Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) rising in the northeast into the bright dawn sky on July 5, 2020. This was from home in Alberta looking toward the Wintering Hills Windfarm towers on the horizon. Fog lies in the low valleys. This was about 3:45 am MDT under very clear skies. A fabulous display of noctilucent clouds also appeared this morning. The comet had passed perihelion only a few days eariler and was emerging here into the dawn sky. This was with the 200mm telephoto and 1.4x Extender for 280mm focal length, untracked for 1.3 seconds at ISO 400 with the Canon 6D MkII. The ground is a stack of 5 exposures to smooth noise in the dark ground.
Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017 T2) passing near the bright galaxy pair Messier 81 (below) and Messier 82 (above) in Ursa Major on the night of May 23/24, 2020. This was the comet that in predictions from autumn 2019 was supposed to have been the highlight of May 2020, perhaps reaching naked-eye brightness, or at least be bright enough to be good for binoculars. It was visible in 15x70 binoculars this night but quite faintly as a fuzzy spot near the brighter galaxies, so about magnitude 8 at best. Comets SWAN and ATLAS for a time usurped this comet for publicity in spring 2020 but also largely failed to perform, certainly not reaching naked eye brightness. This is a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures with the William Optics RedCat astrograph at f/4.9 (250mm focal length) and Canon EOS Ra at ISO 1600, median stacked. Guided on stars — so, yes, the comet has trailed somewhat but it is not noticeable at this image scale and the motion was in the direction of the comet length. The field here is about 8° x 5°, similar to binoculars. North is up.