Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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Comet NEOWISE Close-up, Mark Eby
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Comet NEOWISE Close-up

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Comet NEOWISE Close-up, Mark Eby
Powered byPixInsight

Comet NEOWISE Close-up

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Description

C2020 F3 Comet NEOWISE

C2020 F3, also named Comet NEOWISE, was discovered March 27th, 2020 by astronomers of NASA's NEOWISE program using the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope. Although faint, it was the first "naked eye" comet since Hale-Bopp in 1997, and will not be near Earth again for 6700 years.

This image is a composite of comet-only and star-only images to compensate for the comet's motion relative to the stars. For the comet-only image, each sub-frame had stars removed in PhotoShop via Spot Healing Brush, then were aligned by comet and combined in Nebulosity.

For the star-only image, sub-frames were aligned by stars and combined in Nebulosity, then had all but stars removed in PhotoShop via inverse star-mask. Rest assured the process was more tedious than it sounds.

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Comet NEOWISE Close-up, Mark Eby