Go out and paint the stars.
Vincent Van Gogh
Our quest for the comet actually took two separate nights. On the first night, July 20th, I was pretty sure where I was supposed to look for Comet Neowise, but was unable to locate it where I thought it was expected to be. Up in the northwestern sky near the Big Dipper.
Also, using a new phone, having dropped mine recently, I wasn't quite sure of the settings for the phone's camera. The photos below, look similar to the ones taken just three days later, except you really cannot distinguish any stars in the night sky. That is a definite problem if one is looking for teeny tiny comets in amongst the stars.
Then, once the doubt set in, it was helped along by another star watcher on the hill with us. They told us they had seen the comet the night before, due south. Now that I think about it, and look at our pictures of the comets, I think he most likely saw either a satellite moving though the sky or an airplane. Where they pointed was nowhere near where Neowise was located, and it was not really possible to see the comet without a camera or binoculars.
I went home and did more research on both the comet and how to work my phone camera. I found a graph of the stars and where the comet is placed. And yay! The camera has a night setting!
July 23rd is when Neowise is closest to the earth. It is also getting dimmer as the crescent moon gets bigger in the sky. The 23rd is another perfectly clear night in the East Bay area.
From Earthsky:
Location of Comet NEOWISE from July 20 to 26. Face west-northwest, just after sunset.
After picking Natalie up from work, we headed out to comet-watch. Okay, first we stopped at Five Guys to pick her up a burger and fries, since she worked well passed dinner. Thank goodness you can still get takeout in this time of COVID.
Then, we headed to one of my very favorite places in the entire area, Rancho Park, San Ramon. Sitting in the park, you get a view of the entire valley, over Dublin to the Pleasanton Ridge skyline.
Sitting out on the hillside with cows behind the fence, sand burrs beneath our behinds and mosquitoes in our faces. It was a beautiful summer evening. The crickets were singing, but otherwise it was a much quieter night than just a few weeks ago when the birds and frogs were also joining in with their own night songs.
Just as the sun was setting, a pair of deer came out and walked along the bottom edge of the slough. A couple couple of rabbits with tall as the rest of their bodies kept peering at us from the other side of the barbed wire fence. The dozens of prairie dogs we saw in the spring were no where to be seen.
Thankfully, the rumored tarantulas of Mount Diablo also were not part of our comet quest. pretty sure if they had made an appearance, we would have left faster than a speeding comet. 😋
As we waited for the sky to darken and the stars to appear, Natalie put on the soundtrack to Hamilton. The music serenaded us into the darkness. Wrapped up in an odd collection of sweatshirts, we sat on rags that we found in the car. The temperatures dropped quickly from mid 90s in the afternoon to barely holding on to 60 as we sat on the hillside. Bay area weather definitely keeps you on your toes.
I am not throwin' away my shot -- Hamilton
Here are our photos of Neowise the comet. The second photo has an enlargement of the comet with an arrow to where the comet actually is in the sky. Again, all of these photos were taken with a phone camera.
Even so, when listening to the instructions on how to spot this comet is say, "The best way is to use binoculars first to find it. Don't look at any bright phone screen and expect 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust if you do.
They claim you can see this with your bare eyes, but that seems to be a great exaggeration. In an area with a lot of miscellaneous light sources, the only way to see this comet was to take the photo in the right direction, and then find the comet on the screen. This is also how I read others were doing it, as well.
This may have been different for the early morning photos, but unless you live in an area with super dark nights I don't see how you see this comet unaided. Way back in 1997, when Hale-Bob was visible, I can remember watching it night after night from my bedroom window. This is definitely not the same.
I am very glad we took the time to go out and find it. Well worth the effort.
Below is a photo my cousin Tom took of Neowise up on the north shore area of Minnesota.
“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...”
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