thewayne: (Default)
It is called, cleverly enough, CometNEOWISE. And it's free, both in cost and in adverts!

It's one of those star map programs that uses the phone's GPS/compass/accelerometers to know how you're pointing the phone. I don't know if you must have a cell signal to use it, but you would probably benefit from knowing where the northwest portion of the sky is. It shows the night sky as black, below the horizon as gray, all the constellations, and the comet itself as a very visible red target. And it uses NASA ephemeris data to tie everything together! Probably a good idea to recalibrate your phone's compass before setting out to use it.

I'll try and post a screen shot tomorrow. I imagine there's a similar app in the Android marketplace, but I don't use that and can't make a recommendation. I use an iPhone 8 with iOS 13.5.1.
thewayne: (Default)
(with my wife's pointing directions) She could pick it out in the twilight sky. I could maybe see it, I'm not 100% sure.






Sadly, these are the first two photos that I've posted this year! Well, in terms of creative photography.

We went to a pullout that should have had a good angle, but it had 8-10 cars, and the first person that I saw - before we got out of my wife's car - was not wearing a mask. So I said 'let's just go to the observatory.'

She relented and we went to the observatory.

We couldn't go inside the control room to visit until after sundown - visitors are no longer allowed except under extraordinary circumstances, and spouses are no longer extraordinary. So we went up on to one of the small telescope catwalks, and the angle was great! Excellent elevation to avoid trees and other obstacles. I took a number of shots, including bracketing to try HDR, but that didn't work: with 5-20 second exposures, there was too much star streak for automated HDR to be viable. I might work with it some more, but I like the results of these.

I tried another angle, trying to get one of the telescope domes into the shot, but it just wasn't viable. Maybe another night. I'd also like to try my 6D and see if I can get some less noisy shots with its better sensor.

They're kind of noisy, they were shot at an ISO of 6400, 10 seconds at f7.1 with a Canon SL1 using a remote control as a trigger. The lens is a Canon 75-300 zoom at 75mm. Minimal Photoshop post-processing.

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