Naked Eye Comet C/2020 F3 NEWOWISE nearest Earth July 23

[Curt Renz]

Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE has passed around the Sun and is moving into the early evening western sky. It’s currently visible by naked eye, but is dimming as it heads toward its closest approach to Earth at 0.69 AU on July 23.

I’ve created two charts and an ephemeris that can be viewed on my Comets webpage: Comets

Photos and descriptions of the comet would be welcome additions to this thread.

 

[RayK]

Okay, here's my contributions (so far):

Photo1; f/5.6, 1.6s, exposure +1.7, ISO 4000, 270mm, 7/14/2020 10:15pm

Animation1: two frames, f/5.6, 1s, exposure +1.7, ISO 4000, 260mm, 7/14/2020 10:25-26pm

Both taken from the roof of Samsung's parking garage at North First and Tasman, San Jose, CA. Equipment used was a Nikon D5300 and 200-500mm lens. Re-sized from the original 6000 x 4000px images to 1200 x 800px. Comet was not visible to my naked eye. I did not bring out any binoculars with me to assist with the search; I found it by simply scanning the sky with long exposures on my camera.

Animation2: eight frames, f/4.5, 2.0s, exposure +1.7, ISO 4000, 55mm, 7/16/2020 9:29-32pm

Two nights later I took these at the end of America Center Drive in San Jose. The road ends in a business park at the south end of the San Francisco Bay; essentially some salt ponds. I was looking for some landscape that would be more interesting than trees and parking lots at Samsung. I didn't anticipate power lines going right through the middle of my view. For these shots I used my Nikon 55-300 zoom lens. Again, the comet was not visible to my eyes but the camera's long exposure picked it up fairly well.

 

[swaltner]

I spotted the comet while at the nearby public observatory on Saturday night. The observatory itself and their telescope were closed, but a bunch of hobbyists were there with their own gear. We had a nice bonus on Saturday night of having an ISS flyover, in which the ISS transited right through the comet tail.