Chasing Comet NEOWISE
During the past month our night skies have been visited by a celestial object not often seen by an unaided eye. Comet NEOWISE was only discovered in March and will be visible in the northern night sky until early August.
To capture the ion trail of comet NEOWISE (the blue jet) in the best detail, I had to use my equatorial mount which allows for my camera to remain pointed at a specific point in the sky as the earth rotates. One image wouldn’t capture the faint ion tail comprised of low-mass particles riding the magnetic fields created by the comet and sun. Instead I captured a series of images, 25 in total each at 10 seconds and stacked them using Sequator which is a specialized program for deep sky astrophotography.
The final output shows the deep color and contrast of the ion tail as well as the dust trail which appears as a white cloud behind the nucleus of the comet. This dust tail is made of fragments of the comet in a wide variety of masses and grain size.
Below are several images I’ve captured of the COMET during its brief visit to our skies. The next time it will pass earth will be in nearly 7000 years. I wonder what humans then will think of it. All images below are available for purchase via my online store here.
