Comet Over Dinosaur Park

Photo Composite (blended exposures). Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) at midnight over the badlands and formations of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, in July 2020. It was nearly due north and as low as it got for the night at this latitude of 51° N. A green and magenta aurora colours the northern sky, also blue with perpetual summer deep twilight. Capella is at far right.

The comet’s dim blue ion tail is visible here extending some 18° to the top of the frame; the whitish curving dust tail extends about 12° though it becomes lost in the sky still bright with twilight and the aurora this night. This was a classic comet! Very much the dimmer twin of Comet Hale-Bopp from April 1997.

This is a blend of 6 exposures for the ground stacked to smooth noise, with a single exposure for the sky, with the 35mm Canon lens and Canon 6D MkII camera. The ground exposures are 1- and 2-minutes at ISO 1600 and f/2.8, while the single untracked sky exposure was 20 seconds at ISO 3200 and f/2.5. There was no Moon, thus the need to take very long exposures for the ground to reveal details in the landscape here illuminated by just starlight and the faint aurora that was to the north and that was barely visible to the eye. Otherwise the ground would have been a featureless silhouette.