Darshan Shankar Profile picture
CEO, Founder @BigscreenVR. Previously @ycombinator @UCBerkeley.

Jul 7, 2020, 5 tweets

I got incredibly lucky: with a rare morning with no fog in San Francisco, I was able to photograph Comet #NEOWISE from the Golden Gate Bridge

It peaks today at Magnitude +1 brightness and will be visible to the naked eye for the next week.

#cometc2020f3 #cometNEOWISE #abc7now

You don’t need a DSLR or telescope to see Comet #NEOWISE.

Although I used a DSLR, you can see it with the naked eye, and capture a photo with your iPhone (see below - a 3 second exposure!)

Go check it out this week! Low to the north-east horizon from 4-5AM before sunrise.

More work-in-progress shots of #CometNEOWISE

This is unedited, just comet aligned and ABE in PixInsight.

Canon 6D, 135mm f2, 34 minutes of exposure (30s subs). Shot on July 18 from Lake Sonoma, California

Lots of detail in the blue ion tail and yellow dust tail.

I must thank @peachastro @SeVoSpace and @Komet123Jager (the world experts in comet photography) for inspiring me

And shout out to @tyreus. He captured this amazing portrait of me in front with #CometNEOWISE

See more:

Comet alignment and star rejection in PixInsight is proving tricky with #CometNEOWISE

Two attempts had opposing results. One dramatically improved contrast (right), while the other (left) lost contrast but rejected stars better.

Still not perfect

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