Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) Fading Away

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Photographer:

Mike Olason

Location of Photo:

Tucson, Arizona

Date/Time of photo:

10 August 2020, 0410-0504UT

Equipment:

50mm Finder Scope and ZWO ASI178MC Camera

Description:

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was 95 million miles from Earth moving at 1.6 degrees per day across Earths sky when these images were collected. The comet was about magnitude 6 in these images. The comet reached perihelion in its 6953 year orbit last July 3 when it reached about magnitude 0.6 and is now moving away from the Earth and Sun. The images were collected using an ASI178MC camera and a 50mm finder scope, the field of view is a cropped 0.85 by 0.75 degrees. This is a 3 image Gif taken from 0410-0504Z, each image was 60 seconds and the objects in each successive image showed more atmospheric fading as the comet was getting closer to horizon, 12 degrees above the horizon in the last image. The short 60 second images did not show the tails very well, but I did not want the comet or the stars to be streaked in these images. In other words, no photoshop type software was used on these images. Yes, there is a lot of noise in these images, the temperature was 96F while these images were collected, the camera has no cooling to reduce the electronic noise generated by the camera and I currently do not have the correct software to subtract a dark frame from these images. These are basically raw images.