C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) or Comet NEOWISE is a long period comet with a near-parabolic orbit discovered on March 27, 2020, by astronomers during the NEOWISE mission of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. At that time, it was an 18th-magnitude object, located 2 AU (300 million km; 190 million mi) away from the Sun and 1.7 AU (250 million km; 160 million mi) away from Earth.[3]
NEOWISE is known for being the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997.[4] It was widely photographed by professional and amateur observers and was even spotted by people living near city centers and areas with light pollution.[5] While it was too close to the Sun to be observed at perihelion, it emerged from perihelion around magnitude 0.5 to 1, making it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.[6] Under dark skies, it could be seen with the naked eye[7] and remained visible to the naked eye throughout July 2020.[8] By July 30, the comet was about magnitude 5,[9] but binoculars were required near urban areas to locate the comet.
The above image is made from stacking 59x1 minute images shot at ASA 800. The camera used was a Canon T3i with 55mm lens. The camera was mounted on a tripod with tracking mount but not the best polar alignment. The images were taken on July 20, 2020 at a location northwest of Gainesville, Texas. Learned that my DLSR is pretty noisy camera. Thanks to John Love for processing the images in AstroArt 7 to obtain the above results.
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