Comet NEOWISE

Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE is a newly discovered comet and has started to appear in the evening sky in the norther latitudes just after sunset.  It was visible in the predawn hours last week, we even set our alarm to get up at 3am one morning but it was cloudy. So my first viewing of it was on July 12 around 10:30pm from my front deck.  It is located NNW, low on the horizon so right where the sun sets. Once the sky starts to darken and your eyes adjust to the night sky you can see it with the naked eye.  I aimed my camera and took a 2 second exposure shot and was thrilled to see it how bright it was on the screen.  After playing around with my camera settings I settled on f/5, 2 to 3 sec exposures, ISO 800. I use a tripod and a remote shutter release to reduce camera shake.

I walked down our street to get out of the few street lights we have here and set my tripod up on our green space to the north of our house. These next shots were taken around 11pm.  I wanted to have some foreground images so moved to get the tree line into frame.

  I had my 150-600mm zoom lens on but kept it at the 150mm range to include some foreground.  I hope to get a calm clear evening this month to zoom right in a get a clear close up shot of the comet.  I was still getting a bit of camera shake from the wind which you can see in this next image where I cropped into the comet on my computer.  

The next clear night I plan to go for a drive to find a more interesting foreground.  I have been seeing a lot of well done composite images of the comet with a barn or church in the foreground but I do not know how to layer 2 or 3 photos or use Photoshop to create those composite images.  The images I share here are pretty much what you should see with a pair of binoculars. 

Here is a great chart for those living in Southern Manitoba.

I also turned my camera to Jupiter as it is in opposition (equivalent to a full moon as the earth is between Jupiter and the sun right now) now so very bright in the sky.  You can see 4 of its largest moons with a pair of binoculars as well.  You'll find Jupiter in the SSW sky, you can't miss it!  Here is the shot I got of it with its four moons.  I had not idea I had captured the moons until I loaded the pictures onto my computer, happy accident!

Hope to get more shots of the comet over the next month to share here.
Edited to add a new picture of Jupiter that I took the next day.