SHOOTING THE HEAVENS: COMET NEO-WISE
With 2020 in full swing and being a year of craziness, COVID-19 and lockdowns worldwide, we were waiting for something positive to happen in the early summer to change things a bit. The last several years we have had a few comets make their way through our solar system towards the sun with hope that they would make the swing around and make their way back out to space giving us a nighttime show to watch….but that just didn’t happen. The comets never survived the trip and burned up before coming out the other side. I had forgotten about Neo-Wise simply because I expected the same thing to happen as it made it’s may around our sun. But in early to mid July, I started seeing photos from around the world of the comet from early morning hours. I began researching the internet looking to see how, when and where I could see the comet from my area in Virginia. With an early morning try on or around the 14th, I failed to see the comet. just way to much light pollution. But a few nights later when it had transitioned to nighttime viewing, I gave it another shot. So my wife and I headed to Dandy Point in Hampton to try our luck. I became frustrated once again as it just wasn’t visible with the naked eye and was ready to pack things up and head home. Cristal loaded an app to help us find it and she managed to help steer me in the right direction. We managed to find it only by looking through the Nikkor 200-500mm lens into an area that was fairly dark but still had some light pollution stopping us from seeing it without help.
Below is an image of the comet looking towards the north star and the Big Dipper from Dandy Point. By this time the comet had developed 2 tails. here I could only manage the one. The blue ion tail just didn’t come out in the image. The image isn’t great by any means, but still thankful I was able to catch an image or 2 of it before it moved back towards the outer regions of our solar system.
July 19,2020 comet Neo-Wise from Dandy point in Hampton Va.