… in my world, there is Photography, Astronomy, Electronics, Software Engineering, 3d printing and much more
As Comet C2020/F3 approaches its closest distance to earth tonight, I got interviewed by local newspaper “Kleine Zeitung” for their online content. See their page with the video following this link:
https://www.kleinezeitung.at/steiermark/5842701/Himmelsspektakel_Wie-man-den-Kometen-Neowise-sehen-kann
Finally, after a couple of days, clouds did break up for an unobstructed view of comet C2020/F3 NEOWISE. This time, I left the city area for a quite dark spot (21.3mpss / Bortle 4) at 1600m above sea level. At around 11pm, the comet got clearly visible with naked eye. With binoculars, the comets tail got some structure.
While my cameras did collect images, there was enough time to marvel on the summer milky way and several of the treasures in constellations Sagittarius and Eagle (Lagoon nebula, Eagle nebula, Butterfly cluster, Trifid nebula, …)
As a bonus, there have been lots of meteors to enjoy!
Yesterday night, before going to bed, I took a brief look at the night sky. Fortunately, the forecast clouds did not yet appear. So I took my binoculars and went up to the top most window of my condo’s stair case, which is facing north.
I could not spot the comet with my bare eyes. Though with binoculars, the comet was a pleasant sight, even though it was low in the suburban light polluted sky. At this moment, the comet was a mere 5.5 degrees above the horizon.
So I rushed back down the stairs and grabbed my camera and a tripod. I intentionally did not use one of my tracking mounts, as I expected the comet to reach the adjacent roof top within a short period of time.
Within a few minutes I could capture a set of images to process. Here are the results, all captured with Sony A99-ii and 70-200mm/f2.8 tele lens at 200mm:
It is obvious that the 30x4s ISO1600 exposures are far better in noise than the 115×2.5s ISO12800 exposures. Apart from that (ignore the color cast and gradients, which result from bad calibration data), a lot of information may be pulled from the stacked images.
This years best view of a comet has finally been visible in my region. Weather conditions have been really favorable for a night time spectacle.
Combined with the setting across my home town Graz, viewing from top of Plabutsch (located at the eastern edge of Graz) permitted the comet to rise exactly next to the 2 antennas on the mountain top of Schöckl in 14km distance.
See how remarkably bright the comet is in the wider angle image below. This image was taken with a mobile phone camera! And the comet is clearly visible!
The timelapse video shows the comet rising at 02:38 CEST until mid of nautic twilight at 03:54 CEST. See the amazing pattern of the noctilucent clouds going in waves!
Last night, before Comet C2020/F3 NEOWISE rose above the horizon, I created a timelapse with the moon rising over Graz. The first minutes with a deep red moon were amazing 🙂
The following image of the moon is a mosaic of 2 images. Both images were stacked in AutoStakkert from 400 individual images, using the best 10%.
My limited view from the balcony is not the best for astronomy. I have approximately 120 degree east to west, facing south-east across the city. The maximum altitude i may see stars with the telescope is 74 degrees. Objects positioned low in the sky are blocked by the adjacent building up to 25 degrees. So I have access to only a smaller part of the sky, with typical Bortle 5-6 visibility.
Even though conditions seem to be unfavorable to setup a telescope…
– at times, I have all the planets in view
– the moon is a wonderful sight, even though the air above the city is far from stable
– several deep sky beauties come into view almost year round
– using light pollution filters work really well under these conditions
– I may view or image every night (time and weather permitting) without the hazzle of packing, driving an hour to one of the next darker sites, setting up, …
To proof that the night sky has still a lot to offer in light polluted urban places, I collected the images below in one single night, within less than 4 hours:
Speed of optics and exposure times have a great impact on the resulting image. Even though a higher quantity of individual exposures may improve the result, the total amount of photons collected is key.
The 715mm f/7 APO is significantly slower than the 800mm f/4 photo newton, the total capture time of 600s vs 1560s produces a significantly better result:
Last night I could capture a few light frames of M27. The 3 individual small narrow filtered images were combined in Hubble-Palette colorization
Even though the dark night in June is quite short, I could capture these images of Makarian Chain around M86 in Virgo and the Iris Nebula.
Images captured near Sommeralm, 30km north-east of Graz. Night sky still suffers from light pollution. The milky way was visible, but not crisp and clear.
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