Comet at Dusk

Comet NEOWISE After Sunset

I saw comet NEOWISE at dawn for the last time on July 12th. One day later, on the morning of July 13th, the comet rose above the northeastern horizon in bright skies. As Earth turned during daylight hours the comet circled above Polaris, the North Star, and headed toward the northwestern horizon to appear low in the sky there at dusk. I thought I would need to drive somewhere to find an unobstructed northwestern horizon, but, before doing that, I decided to see if the comet would be visible from my front porch. Just by luck the front porch view included the comet! Here's the front porch scene on July 13th at 9:39 pm DST.

The comet appears under stars of Ursa Major very near the horizon treeline in the lower image center. (You may need to enlarge the image to see the comet.) Neighborhood lights degrade the scene. The next image a few minutes later at 9:44 zoomed in to eliminate foreground lights. It didn't improve the comet's appearance by much.

The convenience of observing from my front porch outweighed the unfavorable neighborhood lighting environment. I was surprised to find the northwestern horizon reasonably clear of clouds because clouds usually increase dramatically by evening at this time of year.

Murky haze occupied the horizon on July 16th. The comet, now higher above the trees, was barely visible through haze at 9:40 as you can see in the next image. I also viewed the comet through my big 25X100 binoculars on this night. The binocular view revealed the bright head and beginning of the tail, but the field of view was too small to see the tail's full extent.

On July 18th the comet was even higher. The next image shows the scene at 9:32.

The next animation shows the comet between 9:33 and 9:44 on July 18th as it sank toward the horizon.

A few nights later I discovered the comet was high enough to appear above the roof in my backyard. This offered limited escape from lights visible from the front porch. Unfortunately, the usual thick haze made images nearly worthless. Since July 18th I've had no luck seeing the comet in clear sky. 

After three or four evenings observing the comet I noticed an increasing accumulation of bug bites on my legs. On all nights I struggled to get images with my old DSLR, but discovered every single one of these images was out of focus. The old DSLR just isn't made for night images. It's extremely hard to tell if stars are in focus when looking through the tiny viewfinder, and setting the focus to infinity still leaves stars unfocused. I envy the many beautiful images from photographers throughout the world made with more modern cameras in dark skies with higher ISO numbers. The only way to surpass the images from my phone is to buy a new camera more suited to night sky photos.

The comet is now fading as it moves further from the Sun. It was fun while it lasted.