Here is your first and last chance to see the comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE as it only comes by every 7000 years or so. It’s currently about 64 million miles away from the Earth and is the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since Hale-Bopp in 1997. Under the right conditions it can be seen with the naked eye and can be photographed fairly easily.

How to see it…

When should I look for it? NEOWISE is visible pretty much all night long in North America in the northern sky. You will need to wait about an hour after sunset before the glow in the sky is low enough that it becomes visible. It will be visible from now through the end of next week (July 25th) and will be at its brightest on July 22nd.

Where is it in the sky? Look for the Big Dipper; it will show up below it in the NW around 10:30 pm and will set around 4:00 am in the NNE sky. These times are all approximate and your results may vary based on where you are looking from. Here are the next few nights where it will show up at 10:30 pm in the Binghamton Area.

These screen shots are from an app called Sky Guide which is $2.99 for iOS. There are many similar apps this is just the one I use. This seems to be a different app from the app “Sky Guide” on the android store which reviews poorly.

Where should I be when I look for it? Dark places…. This is the most important factor and if you are anywhere near town, it’s not dark enough for a great view. Light pollution is huge factor, our first outing we tried to look from Vestal with no luck, then we drove to the Greater Binghamton Airport and again, nothing could be seen (or photographed). On our second trip we went about an hour from home and parked on a desolate dirt road, Pink Hill Road, in Pitcher NY and the view was great!

To find dark places you can drive to, check out the map at DarkSiteFinder.com. You can zoom in on an area and see based on color gradients if you are in a bright or dark area (you will also see that there is not much that is truly dark east of the Mississippi.

You can see that you need to get aways outside of the Triple Cities before things start to get a little dark. We went in the vicinity of the red circle, top right, and we also shot at the Witney Point Reservoir which is in a dark yellow band and th… — You can see that you need to get aways outside of the Triple Cities before things start to get a little dark. We went in the vicinity of the red circle, top right, and we also shot at the Witney Point Reservoir which is in a dark yellow band and there was a big difference in quality and the ability to se it with the naked eye.

How will I know if it will be cloudy? The local news weather forecast is a start but to really get an idea if the skies will be clear, there are Clear Sky Charts you can look up to see data on darkness, cloud cover, humidity, and more. The one local to the Binghamton area is maintained by Kopernik and you can find it here… . There are descriptions on the page that describe all the factors and it is a very handy reference.

What if I just want to look and not take pictures? You will appreciate a good pair of binoculars but in a dark area, you can certainly see it.

Do I need special camera equipment? No, but you will need a tripod. Beyond that, most of the shots on this post are done at settings you can get with an off the shelf camera like a Canon T6 or a Nikon D3500 with the kit lens.

20.0 sec at f2.8, ISO 400 at 16mm in Pitcher NY

OK, now let’s talk settings.

You will need to set your camera to manual to get anything decent. Deep breaths…. Deep breaths, we are going to walk you through this.

Shutter speed: This one you need a calculator for and it is the most important. You need to use the 500 rule here. Your shutter speed should be no longer than 500 divided by your camera crop factor times your focal length. (I will explain in a minute) Any longer than that and the stars will show their motion across the sky and be lines rather than points. OK, so your crop factor is 1.5 if you have a Nikon, 1.6 if you have a Canon, 1.0 if you have a “Full Frame” camera (if you have this, you probably know because you spent a lot of money to get one) and if you have another brand like Sony or Panasonic, you will need to look it up.

So as an example. You have a Canon T6 with the 18-55mm kit lens. You will shoot zoomed all the way in at 55mm to make the comet as big as possible so you will do this math problem. 500/(1.6*55) = 6.0 seconds. If you have a Nikon D3500 and want to shoot with the 70-300 zoomed all the way into 300, you would say 500/(1.5*300) = 1.1 (or 1.0 seconds).

Aperture: You will probably want to shoot this with as wide an aperture as you can with your lens. That is the smallest number of aperture you can get.

ISO: This one is the variable. You will need to change the ISO until you get a picture that looks good to you. The lower the ISO, the less light that comes in. The higher the ISO the more noise, or graininess, is in the photo. It’s a trade off. More expensive cameras handle, as a general rule, a higher ISO and look better. You can also use software like Adobe Lightroom to remove this grain in the image.

Each of the photos in this post have the settings I used and you can use them as a starting point.

How do I focus? The best way is the set your lens to manual focus and use live view on the back of your camera. Most cameras have a zoom button, you can zoom into a star and then manually focus on that star until it is the smallest point on the screen that you can achieve, then zoom back out and take your shots without touching the focus on the lens again.

Are there any special techniques I need? Yes, you want zero shake in the camera when you take the photo so set your camera for a 10 second timer so that you press the shutter button, everything can settle down and then the photo is snapped. If you can figure out how, set your camera to “lock up the mirror” before the snap and this too will help with shake.

If you have specific questions, you can ask them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Beyond that…. Happy Hunting!

How to See and Photograph the Comet NEOWISE C/2020 F3

How to see it…

OK, now let’s talk settings.

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