Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lynx (Lyn)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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C_2020_F2 Neowise, andrea tasselli

C_2020_F2 Neowise

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C_2020_F2 Neowise, andrea tasselli

C_2020_F2 Neowise

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Description

This is a departure from the usual path both in general and in the specific of imaging. I don't normally go after comets but every now and then, when one bright one makes its appearance than I'll try as hard as possible to secure a good shot. This one was too good to pass by. The last visual comet I observed was 17P - Holmes and that was just barely visible to the naked eye and quite small as well. This one was way better visually and a sight to behold in binos. I had just 2 chances to capture it and this image is from the last. As the comet was very low in the northern end of the sky the view from by two mounts was completely block by nearby houses and my shed. So I had to improvise using a tripod and an alt-az manual mount, so no tracking. This severely limits the length of time for each shot. Back of the envelope calculation yielded something of the order of 0.6s. With a bit of stretch this could have been pushed to 1s, which is what I did. On top of that , I had to move the tripod/mount/lens/camera combo every now and then to have a clear shot in between roofs and trees.

All 1s frames were taken at f/2.8, so this is also, in a way, a test of that venerable optics.

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