Caught the comet in the evening of July 20th, 2020 on its way back out of the solar system. The light-polluted and very hazy skies (it was a hot humid evening) made it impossible to see with the naked eye, but binoculars picked it up rather easily. I was about halfway between the horizon and the bottom of the Big Dipper between about 9:30 and 10 pm.
The picture above was taken while still around Nautical twilight/Astronomical twilight, so the sky was not completely dark yet. It was taken before we had located the comet with the binoculars by blindly shooting portions of the sky and looking at the camera display to see whether I was pointed in the right direction. An airplane had to get in on the act, but it looked cool so I did not crop it out.
The shots below were well after sunset and twilight with a dark sky, or at least the best darkness that can be expected in northern NJ.
All the pictures were cleaned up and enhanced in Lightroom and/or Photoshop. ISO 3200 is a little too high for my 7D mkII, especially in hot weather, and I had to process out some of the noise. I could have shot at ISO 1600 and had more tolerable noise with a bit more star trail and blurring of the comet.
I’m happy with them considering the difficult conditions.
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