NEOWISE spotted from Alki Beach

Last night, July 14, 2020, was a pleasantly mild one on Alki Beach in West Seattle, and it turned out to be a perfect on during which to catch a glimpse of Comet C/2020 F3, to which we will henceforth refer as NEOWISE.

I wandered down to the beach with my binoculars and my DSLR camera a little past 9pm to stake out a good spot for comet searching. It turned out to be way earlier than was necessary. Scanning often with the binoculars, I didn't finally spot the comet until right around 10:30pm. Once spotted it was still pretty faint, but at the same time easy to find again.

Shot of Comet NEOWISE from Alki Beach on July 14, 2020.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer

I'm not often accused of being an astrophotographer, though I sometimes like to get a snapshot just to prove I was there. In this case, as the weather forecast looked favorable for the evening I must have read a dozen articles during the day about how to photograph a comet. This gave me about two dozen techniques from which to choose, but enough ballpark information that I thought I would be able to get a decent shot. The one directly to the left is my favorite from the evening.

An unexpected challenge of getting this shot is that NEOWISE was so faint that I couldn't really frame the photos through the camera viewfinder or with the back screen. I ended up taking images, and if the comet wasn't there, I'd just move the camera a bit, take another one, and another, until I found a composition that I liked.

NEOWISE from Alki
Photo: Greg Scheiderer

It worked out pretty OK!

For the photog types out there, I used a Nikon D3100 with the 55-200mm zoom kit lens. I was at ISO 1600. The upper photo was a 10 second exposure at f4.2 with the lens at 66mm. The one to the left was at 55mm, eight seconds at f4.

I found several shots that were zoomed in a little closer to be a tad blurry. It was pretty hard to set focus!

Comet hunting was fun and I was a bit surprised that there were so many folks out who were aware of this event, many of them back for a second evening at Alki. My binoculars gave lots of folks a better look, so that was enjoyable.

NEOWISE was the most impressive comet I've seen. Back in early 2007 Comet McNaught was spectacular, but mostly a Southern Hemisphere event. I caught it briefly one evening as it moved between the clouds right around sunset. Hale Bopp was great in 1996-97, but I don't remember being able to see so much of it's tail, at least when I saw it. I was in college when Comet West was here and still haven't figured out how I missed that entirely.

NEOWISE will be around for a few more weeks. This NASA site has good info for spotting it.