What did you do to your Prime today?

Add Sta-bil before filling up next. I do not think it would help for this tank. Then fuel is supposed to be good for up to 2 years.

 

^ There is likely a driving trip next week that might burn off 160 miles of that old nasty gasoline. That's a start, anyway.

 

I've been up early (4am) each day this week to travel to different vantage points to photograph Comet c/2020 F3 NEOWISE. Our extreme humidity this week has made that difficult due to extra haze. Dew points in the mid 70's. Hopefully "image stacking" will help now that the view is switching from NE mornings to NW evenings through the end of the month.

 

Not a chance of seeing it here at sea level in the armpit of North America. Most mornings it's about 95% or higher humidity and over 80ºF when I get up at 5 AM. I'd love to see your pictures.

 

OK, but they're not good . . . yet.

That's exactly what I was shooting through. Same humidity levels/poor air quality with high clouds. Temp was 78°, dewpoint 72° = 81.84% humidity at 4am and it went up from there. Sweltering week and this coming week is worse with up to 103° actual.

Jerry, using Stellarium from Tampa's viewpoint, you can see it in the NW evening sky starting about the 13th on. It will get dimmer as the month goes and even though "for a comet" it IS bright, it is not bright to see. Stellarium can show you exactly where to look and when. I use the PC version and on my laptop for the field. The web version is here.

OK here are two TERRIBLE, straight from the camera, unadjusted except for cropping, pics of Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. I was shooting over high light polution, very bright OKC, with poor atmosphere and high clouds which I could not see at the time. No image stacking has been done or post color processing, etc. Both are shot with a Sony RX10 Mark IV at 100 ISO, 4 seconds, 48mm and 79mm focal lengths. I hope it will be better next week in the darker NW night sky.

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Found it!! But I cheated. I'll try again after dark, but it looks like the 13th is our clearest night here. Supposed to stay cloudy till then.

 

LOL, for me the 14th is the first night it's above the night horizon. It's a bit higher on the 15th here. It continues to get higher, but dimer through the rest of the month. Temp right now is 99° with a heat index of 107° and today IS the COOL day this week. It's still going to be real hot even at 10pm shooting pics.

(All, bellow is for my location.)

 

Yeah, on second thought, the comet is right next to the sun. I'll be surprised if I get to see it at all. Plus we have trees to our west.

Edit to add: Just went out with NightSky and it's already behind the trees and it's still daylight.

 

^ Jerry, can't you just walk around to the other street to the right of the stop sign to see it? According to your image, it is just 12-15 feet above the street. Or would getting that close to the comet be dangerous?

 

LOL!! There is a street a few blocks away. But I'd still be looking right into the sun. The comet goes below the horizon just before the sun does. Yet you have pictures with a dark sky. Makes me wonder if we're looking at different comets or if Night Sky is giving wrong info about the location.

 

Now that it's visible in the NW evening sky, it's position will change slightly each day. It starts higher each night getting it farther from the sun as it gets dark until it sets. This puts it in darker and darker sky each successive night. I use Stellarium to forecast where it's going to be at what time on what day before I go. As the days go forward, it will be in dark sky longer and start higher in the sky each night as the sun sets. It's too soon to get a view in the NW just yet because of the sun as you found out. Wait until the 14th or so depending on your location in North America. It's faint to the eye. Use binoculars to find it once you locate the sky position. It's not as easy as everyone thinks.

 

Cool... I look forward to seeing your results!

(I was into astro-imaging (film based and CCD/CMOS), but now am content to just put my eyeball to the eyepiece)

 

Nice hardware on some very nice mounts. Show us the nebula's! I'm sure you have many.

I plan to do a shoot of Orion's belt later on as well as a time lapse of the Milky Way if I can find a good foreground. I'll have to drive at least 4 hours to find decent darkness. Takes a lot of planning. Being in CT, you know about lack of dark sky.

To keep this within the thread boundaries, while driving the Prime around looking for comet photo sites several days ago, I snapped a quick moon pick. It's a bit fuzzy due to the remaining African dust in the high atmosphere. Shot with a Sony RX10 Mark IV. Focal 600 mm at 100 ISO, 1/250, f 6.3.

 

So far I've been socked in with clouds and storms.

On my phone, I use Celestron SkyPortal. It's free and has the advantage of not charging you to buy the extra database of small, special deep sky objects, like newly discovered comets like C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). It's made to control Celestron telescopes, but it's an excellent object finder. Make sure you search for C/2020 F3 and you'll get the right one. Several older objects have NEOWISE in the name. You can also set the date and time with SkyPortal to look forward and see where the objects will be in the future for your location.

The good thing is even though it's headed away from the sun, the earth's orbit is now bringing it much closer to us, at night in the NW sky. On July 22nd, it will be at its closest point to us. Depending on where you live, it should be between 10° and 20° above the horizon in the NW sky in dark sky. After that, it's going to get more faint very quickly. Don't wait until the 22nd though. It might be cloudy that day.

I'll be out in the Prime looking for deep sky objects nightly for a few weeks, if it's clear.

 

Down here, it's still just a couple degrees north of the sun. It's going to have to get quite a bit east of the sun for us to have any chance at seeing it.

I'm not really a big astronomy buff, but I do like to keep informed. Night Sky seems to work well for me. It's also free. Right now, aimed south and below the horizon, w/o moving the phone, it shows a rocket body, lots of Starlink satellites, the ISS, the Small Magellanic Cloud, Jupiter, Saturn, a few other satellites, and lots of celestial bodies I've never heard of. LOL!

 

There's LOTS of stuff floating around up there. Night Sky is iOS only. SkyPortal swings both ways. I'm Android.

I set my Stellarium to Tampa, FL, for 7/15/20 at 9:30pm and it's about 1 fist high (held at arm's length) above your NW horizon. It gets higher each night through the first of August at the same time of night. On the 21st it looks to be 2-3- fists high in the NW. The moon comes up on the 22nd for you so it will make it harder to see.

 

Out in the Prime looking for new photo locations for the comet and other deep sky objects. This cloud never moved and the comet is right in the center of the cloud! It was a tough week for astrophotography. It's either been socked in with clouds, rain, or 20 mph wind.

Sometimes obtaining the goal is not as satisfying as what you find along the way. Samsung Galaxy S20+, 26mm, F 1.8 @ 1/289 sec.

 

Thunderstorms here the last few evenings. But it's rainy season and we need the rain, so I have no right to complain. Hope you can get some good shots. Mine probably wouldn't have been good even on a clear night anyway.

 

We've had those as well even though we're under this massive heat dome. I'll take all the rain we can get. June is our wettest month and we hardly got a drop.

The comet is closer to the earth but farther from the sun so it's getting dimer. I think I'm done, but hey, It'll be back in 6,766 years.