NEOWISE

We went looking for a comet again.

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We hadn’t been anywhere “just us” for a while. My mom and sister took the kids and we headed to Roscoe around 5PM.

This is the spot I was trying for earlier this week. The clouds were clearing up but rain earlier in the day made some of these county roads a little tricky. (Plus, I didn’t want our tripods to sink in the mud.) We stopped at this crossroad to wait for a train to pass, made a few images then moved to one of our backup spots (on pavement). We had backup spots further north and back south east, but no time to reach them because of our late start.

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Though a 400mm 2.8 on a Nikon. I wasn’t sure what I would be able to get of anything further away than the moon at that focal length, but it was fun to try anyway. I was stuck at about 1 second exposure times and that camera body isn’t very pretty at high ISO so I spent more time on other lenses. Made this to set focus for a try on the comet but I wasn’t happy any of those images.

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Though a 35mm 1.4 on a canon body, soon after we got to our backup spot. We ended up trading mud for a chain link fence, but you can’t have everything when you need to get home on the same night.

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Through an 85mm 1.5 on a canon body. The comet wasn’t visible to the naked eye when we started, but you could see it if you didn’t try to look for it.

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Through a 70-200mm 2.8 at 200mm. At that focal length, you are stuck at around 2-3 seconds before you get star trails, but I’m much happier with higher ISO numbers on this body than the Nikon. Although as I write this, I am thinking about putting a fuji body on with an adaptor, that might have worked…

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The comet with two turbines. 14mm 2.8 on a canon body. This is the last lens I used, mainly because it was the only one I used on my first attempt. I could not get it tall enough to clear the top of the fence without getting on the roof of my car, but time was a factor.

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The same lens, turned a little further west. You can see the light from the moon and a few more turbines. Fun fact: at this angle the blades from those turbines were passing in front of the moon. Something I will have to try to capture at another time.

Hard to tell but this has Ang sitting next to her camera which was set up to capture star trails. Looking southwest. We were on the inside of the service road behind a picnic area along 30.

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Looking southeast, traffic passing under the milky way with the lights of more turbines in the distance. Those two bright spots are Jupiter and Saturn. Probably the last image before we packed up. We were there maybe an hour.

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Looking at one of the turbines though that 400mm. I liked how the blades were passing though the red light of it’s beacon.

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We left around 5, with one stop for a picnic dinner on the way, picking a spot, shooting, we got home around 2AM. Pretty good for a date night.

John Skees