Comet

[Peter Wilcox]

Just a heads up, if anyone is interested in comets. Comet Neowise is rising in the northeastern morning sky starting about 3:30AM for mid-latitude northern hemispherites. Nicest I've seen since Comet Bennett on perimeter guard in Viet Nam in 1970. I got out of bed this AM and took some pics.

[Bob Gramann]

Thank you for the photo. I got up yesterday but saw clouds instead. Your photo is inspriational. Maybe I’ll try again.

[Matthew Lau]

Great photo! What's your setup?

[Peter Wilcox]

It's a Panasonic G5 with an old 50mm (100mm equivalent in a 4/3 camera) manual Nikkor lens. I bought an adapter a few years ago since I have a bunch of Nikon lenses from prehistoric days when everything was manual and I developed and printed myself. Exposure 13 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800. Subsequently I've taken some with longer lenses but they're slower and at shorter exposure times (to minimize earth's rotational drift) I had to crank the ISO which degraded the picture too much.

The comet is now visible in the northwest after evening twilight, so I'll try some more - won't have to get up at 3AM.

[David King]

Wish we could get some dark sky nights in the city but apparently everyone in charge hates that idea.