But now, an object that has been all but absent from the evening sky since NEOWISE rounded the sun, is now back in view and will pose an increasing hindrance to comet watchers with each passing night.
Since rounding the sun, the comet has slowly been getting higher in the northwest evening sky and its position relative to the Big Dipper has made it fairly easy to find. ( Magnitude is a measure of an object's brightness, with small numbers denoting brighter objects.) During that time frame the comet's approach to Earth had nicely compensated for its increasing distance from the sun. The comet, in fact, shone at magnitude +1.6 on July 4, and had slightly to around magnitude +2.0 (about as bright as Polaris, the North Star) by July 15. (Image credit: Courtesy of Evan Zucker)īecause the comet had been approaching the Earth during the past few weeks, its fade-down since sweeping around the sun has been slow.
The single 13-second exposure was processed in Adobe Lightroom and Topaz AI De-Noise.
#Neowise comet iso
They used a Sony a7iii camera with a Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM lens, set to f/1.4 and ISO 800, mounted on a 6-in. "The comet itself was a very obvious naked eye object, even all the way down to the horizon, but the ion tail was a challenge to perceive naked eye," Zucker wrote on Facebook (opens in new tab). On July 18, 2020, astrophotographer Evan Zucker and his wife, Paula, drove three hours to the Mojave Desert north of Desert Center, California, to see Comet NEOWISE.