Sunday 12 July 2020

Comet Neowise

This morning I set the alarm for 2am and drove out to Coombe Road near Therfield Heath with my Z7, tracker and Zeiss 35mm and 135mm Lenses. Driving up the A1 I could clearly see Comet Neowise-easlily visible to the naked eye and probably the brightest comet I have seen (apart from a very challenging daylight sighting of one of the McNaughts with bins) since Hale Bopp in 1997 and Hyakutake in 1996.
I wasn't sure of the best spot but I ended up on a lay-by at Coombe Road and set up my tracker. The first couple of shots were tests with the 35mm just to get some idea of exposures and set to work over the next hour. 
I took a couple of close ups with the 135mm 1o seconds F4 at iso 800, and this is the cropped close up.



As the sun started to rise I could also see noctilucent clouds appearing and I eventually ended up with a sequence of three 35mm F4 images of 2-6 seconds which I ran through Aurora HDR and came up with this image.


While I was up there I also enjoyed the naked eye views of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and eventually Venus. 

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