On July 13, 2020, I assembled my equipment to see if I could get images of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3). I used my sturdiest tripod, remote shutter release, DSLR camera and binoculars. I set up on my deck, behind our house, which faces to the northwest. At about 8:45 PM EDT, I started by observation session.

Conditions were a little less than ideal. The sky along the horizon looked hazy and it was still twilight. The stars were not visible, which made it hard to find the comet without any points of reference. I scanned the skies with my binoculars to try to find it. Around 9:45 PM EDT, I thought it was a bust and began to break the equipment down for the night. I thought that it had already set behind Bald Eagle Ridge. However, I decided to scan the sky one last time. That’s when I spotted NEOWISE with my binoculars. I quickly set up again, pointed the camera in the general area, at 100 mm focal length, and got the following image.

I centered the image in the viewfinder, zoomed in to 200 mm focal length, and took several more images before the comet faded in the haze and set behind the tree. The following images were the two best results.

The following night, I was able to take this image.