Comet NEOWISE at night

On July 15th I arrived at CrossLife Bible Church, Westminster MD, my home church, for our normal prayer group meeting at 6:30 PM.  The service ended at 7:30 and I noticed that the skies were somewhat clearing up toward the north/northwest.  We have a clear view in the direction where NEOWISE would be and so after dropping my wife back home I returned to the church property and setup my camera.

It was 8:40 when I arrived and got setup. There was still a lot of high cirrus clouds covering the sky where NEOWISE is located. I looked for the comet from about 8:50 to about 9:41 and nothing, not with the naked eye, not with 10x50 binoculars. Then, at 9:45, I spotted it! Shinning through the thin clouds it was still a splendid sight.

Comet NEOWISE, July 15, 2020 10:06 PM
18mm, f/5.6, ISO 1600 15x5 sec

It was about 74 degrees, with a strong wind (it's always windy at the church since we sit at the top of a hill and for some reason all the air rushes right over our site). I knew I would lose some shots just due to the camera being buffeted by wind gusts over 20mph. But my patience paid off.

I took 118 images, and processed four different sets. One of those sets produced a fairly good image of NEOWISE even considering the image was shot through a layer of clouds.

Comet NEOWISE, July 15, 2020 10:08PM
270mm, f/6.3, ISO1600 10x5sec

This image of NEOWISE was taken at 10:08 PM with a Canon 70D and Tamron 18-270mm lens. The lens was set at the full 270mm focal length and aperture at f/6.3. I took 21 subs, of which I used 10 in the final stack. Each was taken with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 5 seconds. The subs were pre-processed and stacked with Nebulosity 4.0, and the stacked image further processed in PixInsight and Paint Shop Pro. I did take darks to limit the sensor noise and hot pixels, but Nebulosity didn't do such a good job removing the pixels. You can see them in a zoomed-in version of the photo as streaks of colored dots.

Now that the weather is not looking so good for the next week or so, it looks like the next photo opportunity will be at my home with the WO-GT102 telescope on my AP1100GTO mount. The comet will likely fade a bit by then (it is moving quickly away from the sun) but it will be much higher in a darker sky, and finally high enough to clear my tree line.