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After hearing so much on the news about Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3), I decided to give it a look at what all the noise is about. I called fellow imager Bob Duvall and said “We need to make an effort on this. Everyone is asking about it and I haven’t even tried to see it”. Bob and I agreed that we would meet at my observatory in the wee hours this morning, Bob physically and me remotely, in what we both agreed would probably ultimately end up being a “fool’s errand’ (Bob’s words). Alarms went off at 4:30AM and we touched base by phone to see tons of moisture in the atmosphere and huge bright Moon but only low isolated clouds. So we opened up Cerro Toro observatory and hoped to spot the comet by 5:05AM as that is when twilight begins on July 9. It was bad enough that the Moon appeared like a searchlight. Now twilight was upon us. But at 5:05AM at CAV, the comet was barely 1 degree about the northeastern horizon and, of course, we couldn’t spot it. Not to mention that I cannot see anything with my 100mm f/3.8 Vixen refractor below about 5 degrees elevation in my observatory. I kept taking pictures through the Vixen of my observatory wall – needs a paint job! So I slewed the telescope to Menkalinan (beta Aurigae) east of Capella to see if it was clear enough low and the Auriga star came through bright – encouraging! Finally ay 5:35AM, I collected my first image above the observatory wall spying on the comet which had a stellar nucleus and long tail! You can imagine my delight seeing that beautiful comet on my computer screen! But that didn’t match the sheer excitement I could hear in Bob’s voice on the phone when he went outside the warm room and spotted the comet big and bright naked eye! He said he hadn’t seen comet this good since Hale-Bopp in 1997! I was jealous! So I preceded to take LRGB 10 second exposures with the Vixen and the attached colorful shot showing the entire comet and tail is a total of 40 seconds! By now, though, between the Moon and dawn, it was pretty bright out and Bob took a photo of the scope aiming at the comet with Venus in the east (see”ImagingCometNeowise.jpg”). Amazing anything could be teased out of that “explosion” of light! Finally, at 5:55AM, I switched over to the 14.5-inch RCOS telescope to see if I could capture an image. It was so light out by the time the comet had risen above the observatory wall for the RCOS, essentially all I could record was the nucleus, coma and proximal tail. But immediately upon stretching the data, I could see some asymmetry in the coma and what appeared to be a lucent “hole” in the coma. I reviewed images of the comet coma from the day before and couldn’t detect this. Whether this is real or a transient phenomena or artifact is yet to be seen. The hole appeared in all of my LRGB subs. I made a gif animation showing the “dysmorphia”. The RCOS image is also 40 seconds exposure. Our advice, get up early and see this comet in the dawn light with binoculars or naked eye! I look forward to seeing it myself other than through the lenses of my cameras! It will be worth your effort! Bob took a magnificent DSLR wide angle image of the comet over my well house and both of us have images on the website Spaceweather.com (see below). We plan to meet with this comet again tonight and hope to follow it all the way into the evening skies later this month!
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=164827 — Bob Duvall Spaceweather.com
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=164820 — my Spaceweather.com effort