had a lucky streak tonight, and everything lined up so that I was able to see and photograph comet C/2020 f3 (NEOWISE) that’s almost at peak (closest point to earth anyway). No line at the grocery store, dinner was done and eaten in time for me to check the location a friend had given, realize it was almost an hour away, get my gear together, and drive out to it.
Then when we were there, a cop drove by the road we were parked on, came over the loudspeaker, and told everyone they had to re-park on the main road; it’s like, come on man, this happens once every seven thousand years. But whatever, he has a gun and can shoot me if he feels like it, so I move the car, grab the gear, and walk back to the same ledge, where the cop proceeds to periodically shine his stupid searchlights at us. Ugh. At least I had a lens hood.
Spent about 20 or 30 minutes photographing. I really should have done a bunch of 1-second exposures and stacked them for the long lens; I had to do some work in photoshop to remove the slight star trails. Also, the second image is a mosaic of 3 frames, so it won’t line up perfectly with a star chart because the frames were tens of seconds apart. There is what appears to be a meteorite next to the little dipper’s handle, too. A nice bonus.
