Comet NEOWISE provided amazing photo opportunities the week leading up to July 31, 2020 — and it shows in the week’s winner and runner up, who captured the comet in ways that will make your jaw drop.
The winner of this week’s contest is Stefanie Harron with her picture of Comet NEOWISE reflected in a lake in Stagleap Provincial Park in British Columbia.
It is a single, 10-second exposure tracked with a Celestron AVX/Orion Autoguider, and taken with a Canon 5D IV and 400mm / 1.4x converter.
“The narrow ion tail is evident in this shot, it is composed of gases that have had electrons stripped by solar radiation,” Harron said. “I only allowed 10-second exposure so to keep trees sort of in focus.”
“It’s the kind of image that you keep coming back to look at,” one of the judges noted. “It has that wow factor.”
This week’s runner up is Oleg Bouevitch with his detailed image of Comet NEOWISE captured on July 17.
Shooting from Renfrew, Ontario, Bouevitch took this image with a Sony Alpha 7iii camera using a Rokinon 135mm f/2 manual lens on an iOptron SkyGuider Pro mount. The picture is composed of 64 ten-second exposures.
The sheer detail in the image is amazing. One can clearly see the comet’s two tails, and the stars in the background are crisp and clear.
“That double tail is quite spectacular and again it also has that wow to it,” a judge noted.
