Seems like so much bother – I can see Neo wise on this blog whenever I want. Multiple times a day, even.
Neo, it’s about time you got the recognition you’ve long deserved.
I’m planning to travel to a dark sky area in AZ this Sunday evening. (The July 11 – 13 viewing was at dawn.) I’m hoping for a good view. If not it will be a fun evening anyway.
I drove from AZ to Idaho to see the total eclipse on a whim the evening before. Absolutely worth it. A memory of a lifetime.
These events are worth seeing.
“Neowise.”
Isn’t that redundant?
Eva Marie,
I got extraordinarily lucky with the last solar eclipse. I was almost on top of the area of longest duration and the weather broke just in time! It was one of the most magical things I have ever experienced. Indescribable.
Rufus, I agree.
Coincidink? I think not…
Wow, you can see it with the naked eye here right now. Pretty cool.
I went out and took a picture of it after I read about it here. The best evening view where I am is supposed to be July 22nd in the evening.
Thanks, Mapalaine, for a nice foto. Also to remind me that Parler exists. Maybe it can become a Free Speech place instead of Twitter.
But what about Gab? Already too many “white supremacists”.
I still like this “old-fashioned” blogosphere, with a blogroll!
But it’s so hard to keep up my own. 🙁
L Johnson,
It’s great that you saw it! Was it morning or evening? Unfortunately Parler wants me to create an account before allowing me to view your image 🙁
I checked C2A planetarium software. At my location north of NYC sunset is at 8:26pm. At 9:30pm the Sun is about 12 degrees below the horizon which corresponds to the beginning of astronomical twilight. This is when I know that the sky is dark enough to begin polar alignment of my telescope. Stars are visible but the sky isn’t pitch dark yet. According to C2A the head of the comet will be 16 degrees above the horizon, looking directly northwest. Astronomical darkness occurs at 10:25pm when the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. At that time the comet’s head will be 10 degrees above the horizon. These figures are for tomorrow July 17, 2020. Unfortunately the weather here has been terrible.
@Brian Morgan I took that image last night at about 10pm from Northern California, from about latitude 42 degrees. NEOWISE was higher in the sky than I expected. We have a low range of hills behind our house, so I was afraid the comet would drop below them before it got dark enough for good pictures, but it was high enough so that I had plenty of time to change iso, shutterspeed and aperture for 38 images, and there was probably still a few hours of viewing before it dropped below the hills.
@Tom Grey. You are welcome. As you know, Parler is the Twitter without the censorship. They started in 2018, and had about one million subscribers as of about three weeks ago, about the time I joined. Then membership there exploded to about 3 million as of about 10 days ago. What it is now after Twitter lost control of their censorship tools yesterday is anyone’s guess. I started out a blog in 1994, but as long as Neo blogs, it is hopeless to compete :).
Here is a great photo taken from an observer in the Czech Republic:
Re: Parler, I believe that the explosion in subscribers 10 days ago can be, at least partially, attributed to Dan Bongino’s public announcement and endorsement of Parler.
Cool. I have been seeing it for the past couples weeks wondering which planet it was since it is brighter than any star I know of. I often awake at about 5 AM to relieve my bladder and my bathroom window faces the northeast. I never noticed it’s tail, but then I never put my glasses on for my predawn trips to the Loo.
My neighbor and I saw it last night, and my $250 binoculars delivered a much more expansive image than his $1000 telescope! He was disappointed, but then we turned 180 degrees to look at Saturn in the southeast, and his mood improved remarkably!! My binos were almost useless (showing a little blob with ear-like bulges where the rings should be!), but he had a spectacular view of the rings! I have a big telescope too, but you don’t need one for this comet!
Yes Neo, you should enjoy being celebrated as “NEOWISE” for a while!
Neo;
Because the comet is “white,” it is deeply offensive to many blacks; in fact it is racist and demeaning to blacks.
After all, who points out “black” comets?
Nobody.
You seem to be a decent person, so I will assume that your racist attitudes are subconscious; that you are unaware of your racist thoughts and tendencies and, of course, your white privilege.
I suggest you attend some “re-education clinics” to learn the extent of your racist attitudes and to begin the process of purging yourself of your deeply held – but unknowable to you – racist mindset.
Next week you can sign up for such classes at the Lubyanka Building, Moscow , Russia, which commence August 1.
No need to do your fingernails; they will do it there for you, gratis. When they are done, your fingernails will be invisible.
In the meantime, you had better find a better name for the Neowise Comet; I’ll let you figure that out.
FWIW, I commented NEOWISE here three days ago. As usual, no hat tip. I don’t particularly care, but I will dig my heels in a bit this time.
I actually forgot you mentioned it, and put the post up in reaction to an email someone sent me. Accept my abject apologies.
neo: Abject apologies accepted!
BTW, anyone attempting to see any comet should be aware that a comet, even a really bright one, is not a breathtaking experience.
Most non-astronomy-minded people are disappointed when I show them a comet.
huxley, I agree with you. I would recommend capturing the comet on film or digital camera but only if you can attach the camera to a tripod. A handheld smartphone will give disappointing results. If your camera has a manual mode, select the lowest f/stop and an exposure of about 30 seconds. If the image is washed-out then the sky is still too bright. Decrease the exposure until the sky is a shade of gray.
Brian Morgan: Astrophotography at the amateur level is a tough gig. When I moved to New Mexico from San Francisco, I considered resuming amateur astronomy, but I didn’t realize how serious light pollution has become *everywhere*.
Furthermore, as this article argues:
______________________________________________
What about Astrophotography?
Don’t.
Just don’t.
I know, I know, you want to. The urge to photograph what you see is almost irresistible. The problem is, beginners have no idea what they’re getting into. This is way more involved than you can possibly imagine. You’ve got a lot to learn, between the night sky and your new telescope. Don’t complicate matters by getting involved with astrophotography. What’s more, photographers, as a rule, have a harder time adjusting to astrophotography, than “civilians.” They assume their knowledge of conventional photography will shorten the curve for them, but usually the opposite happens. Next to department junk-scopes, astrophotography is the #1 reason people drop out of the hobby.
My friend and fellow club member Herb B, who is really good at this, estimates he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars, over a decade of his life, and untold thousands of rejected images, to get where he is today. When new members excitedly ask him for advice on getting started in astrophotography, his usual response is this:
huxley, agreed, it’s taken me three years to get to where I am. Regarding light pollution I am thankful that I have suburban/rural Bortle 5 skies. Many people on forums have terrible skies.
I find that most people over-complicate the process of exposure determination. My rule of thumb is to adjust the exposure so that the sky background becomes a shade of gray. You don’t want black. Of course exposure depends on your location, telescope, and camera. All things being equal I can get away with a 2-minute exposure with my Bortle 5 skies but if I were in or near a city I would have to cut it back to about 20 seconds.
Another challenging aspect to astrophotography is that we are dealing with very low signal levels. That galaxy you are trying to capture is very dim even after using a 2-minute exposure. In order to get a good quality image you need to take calibration frames, what are called “darks”, “flats”, and “bias”. Once you calibrate each of your “light” frames then you can “stack” them.
It is not uncommon for me to capture 60 2-minute exposures. The final stacked image is equivalent to 120 minutes. I have gone for as long as 11.6 hours to capture a faint galaxy:
A comet like NEOWISE is much brighter than a faint galaxy. A person with a camera and a tripod can get good results with a single exposure. I was pleased with my images of Hale-Bopp taken with a $200 Kodak digital camera and a sturdy tripod.
Brian Morgan: You are a better man than I, Gunga Din!
Props to you for hanging in and doing the work. Your M81 shot with a 2.8″ refractor astonishes me. (Good grief, the spellcheck here is correcting me on “refractor.”)
Here’s a guy who did a stacked shot of Jupiter in *daylight* I can’t get over:
He took it with a Questar 3.5″ Maksutov-Cassegrain and like any astronomy kid who cut his teeth on “Sky & Telescope” in the 60s I lusted for a Questar. I still do, a bit.
huxley, You don’t see many Questar’s these day! When we were kids Questar had full page ads in Sky & Telescope magazine.
My friend in the UK, who suffers from 52 degrees north latitude, has gotten remarkable lunar images in daylight.
I think that astrophotography can be a terrifically rewarding hobby for someone with the time, the weather, and financial resources. Thankfully I was able to get by with $2000 but I have pretty much pushed the envelope with my present setup. I’d have to spend $5000 for the next quantum leap in quality.
I see that the greatest challenge for newcomers is, well I’ll be harsh, a natural tendency to over-complicate things and an unwillingness to experiment. They would rather purchase high-tech software than learn the fundamentals. Of course I understand that not everyone has the time nor the good weather to endlessly pull levers and experiment.
Also, without fail, almost everyone new to the hobby rejects lunar and planetary imaging even though these are some of the brightest objects in the sky. That is not to say that imaging is trivial but you can get good results with less-than-ideal atmospheric conditions.
And there are more opportunities than just lunar, planetary, and deep-sky astrophotography. There is the study of Exoplanets and Variable Stars.
There really is no end to the fun but unfortunately we are all limited by the weather. I am hoping that the new Solar Cycle will yield more cloud-free skies. There is evidence that Cosmic Rays affect cloud formation. Cosmic Rays are at the highest during times of solar minima like now.
If anyone is interested in a quick way to visualize the phases of the Moon over the next 30 days, here is a web application I wrote to show off the abilities of an open source library I wrote and continue to update:
Everything updates in real-time so there is no need to press your browser’s refresh button.
Brian,
Wow!! Thanks for sharing your hobby. You have done some impressive work!
Re astrophotography: every time I think about getting into it, I just lie down until it goes away, and then tell my wife how much money we just saved. Just looking at planets, asteroids, and comets is enough for me.
The best astronomy investment I have made recently was constructing a concrete pier on which to mount my telescope! Fiddling with tripods and their foibles is a waste. And it is lovely to center a planet and then go in to dinner for a couple of hours, and on coming back out looking into the eyepiece and finding it still where you left it!
I saw a good comet from a commercial aircraft some decades ago. I can’t remember which one it was–Hale-Bopp in 1995, maybe?–but it was bright and impressive up there. It really helps to be way above the cloud layer in the evening.
Ray Van Dune: Astrophotography can be pricey but I refuse to drop $1000+ into a new camera. The most I’ve ever spent was $400 for a 10 year old cooled CCD, and my scope was used at manufacturer-hosted star parties. I paid $500 for it; regular price $800. My mount is 50 years old, a gift when I was 12 years old. It hasn’t got Go-To capability but I get around that problem by plate solving. A lot of the add-ons I’ve designed and built myself through a combination of 3D printing and Electronics 101. Yes, I’m cheap but my cheapness brings me untold satisfaction.
Ray Van Dune: Regarding your pier, that’s great! Unfortunately I live in a heavily wooded area. I would have to build three piers to get good coverage of the sky. Do you have to re-run your “electrics” from the house out to the pier each time? Half of my set-up time is deploying the power to various consumers: camera, mount, dew heaters, flip flat, two raspberry pi’s, a router, laptop power, and CAT5 cable that connects my home network with the telescope. So my time is split in two parts: (1) plant the tripod, level it, mount the telescope, (2) the “electrics”. It would be nice to have a permanent observatory but I believe I’ve gotten a much longer lifetime out of equipment bringing it inside after each use, however I do leave the mount and electrics outside if I get two or more consecutive clear nights but I always bring the scope in for fear of mold and mildew forming on the optics.
Texan99: Weather is the key (and light pollution). If I lived 200 miles to the northwest I would have many more clear nights. I can’t justify spending lots more money with the weather around here. Hale-Bopp was great. Before that was Comet West in 1975. I was a student in Arizona at the time. Early one morning I drove far from the city. It was twilight. The eastern horizon had a thin orange glow. The comet’s head was just above it. The comet’s tail fanned-out and stretched overhead. This was with the unaided eye. Really spectacular!
Rufus T. Firefly: Thanks for your kind words. In an alternate universe I would be a professional astronomer (sigh).
By the way, last night’s attempt at NEOWISE was thwarted by clouds, however tonight looks promising.
“Thanks for your kind words. In an alternate universe* I would be a professional astronomer (sigh).”
You and me both!
*And, if you discover that alternate universe you can win the Nobel for Physics!
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Ummm …
” … the comet’s best views will come during a three-day stretch on the mornings of July 11, 12 and 13″
JimNorCal:
Let bygones be bygones.
Still good viewing the next couple of evenings.
I was not aware of this. Thanks for the heads up!
On this page, https://www.space.com/comet-neowise-parker-solar-probe-photo.html
there is a very cool video taken from the space station of it appearing over the Earth at sunrise.
Seems like so much bother – I can see Neo wise on this blog whenever I want. Multiple times a day, even.
Neo, it’s about time you got the recognition you’ve long deserved.
I’m planning to travel to a dark sky area in AZ this Sunday evening. (The July 11 – 13 viewing was at dawn.) I’m hoping for a good view. If not it will be a fun evening anyway.
I drove from AZ to Idaho to see the total eclipse on a whim the evening before. Absolutely worth it. A memory of a lifetime.
These events are worth seeing.
“Neowise.”
Isn’t that redundant?
Eva Marie,
I got extraordinarily lucky with the last solar eclipse. I was almost on top of the area of longest duration and the weather broke just in time! It was one of the most magical things I have ever experienced. Indescribable.
Rufus, I agree.
Coincidink? I think not…
Wow, you can see it with the naked eye here right now. Pretty cool.
I went out and took a picture of it after I read about it here. The best evening view where I am is supposed to be July 22nd in the evening.
https://parler.com/post-view?q=93b0c7a5f7434a50ab40f600f8e0a2db
Thanks, Mapalaine, for a nice foto. Also to remind me that Parler exists. Maybe it can become a Free Speech place instead of Twitter.
But what about Gab? Already too many “white supremacists”.
I still like this “old-fashioned” blogosphere, with a blogroll!
But it’s so hard to keep up my own. 🙁
L Johnson,
It’s great that you saw it! Was it morning or evening? Unfortunately Parler wants me to create an account before allowing me to view your image 🙁
I checked C2A planetarium software. At my location north of NYC sunset is at 8:26pm. At 9:30pm the Sun is about 12 degrees below the horizon which corresponds to the beginning of astronomical twilight. This is when I know that the sky is dark enough to begin polar alignment of my telescope. Stars are visible but the sky isn’t pitch dark yet. According to C2A the head of the comet will be 16 degrees above the horizon, looking directly northwest. Astronomical darkness occurs at 10:25pm when the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. At that time the comet’s head will be 10 degrees above the horizon. These figures are for tomorrow July 17, 2020. Unfortunately the weather here has been terrible.
@Brian Morgan I took that image last night at about 10pm from Northern California, from about latitude 42 degrees. NEOWISE was higher in the sky than I expected. We have a low range of hills behind our house, so I was afraid the comet would drop below them before it got dark enough for good pictures, but it was high enough so that I had plenty of time to change iso, shutterspeed and aperture for 38 images, and there was probably still a few hours of viewing before it dropped below the hills.
I don’t like to promote Facebook, but here is the link I put there for my friends who are still there:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10219511095500403&set=a.1044215018005&type=3&theater
L Johnson, great I see the image on FB. Thanks!
@Tom Grey. You are welcome. As you know, Parler is the Twitter without the censorship. They started in 2018, and had about one million subscribers as of about three weeks ago, about the time I joined. Then membership there exploded to about 3 million as of about 10 days ago. What it is now after Twitter lost control of their censorship tools yesterday is anyone’s guess. I started out a blog in 1994, but as long as Neo blogs, it is hopeless to compete :).
Here is a great photo taken from an observer in the Czech Republic:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200716.html
The double-tail reminds me of Hale-Bopp.
Re: Parler, I believe that the explosion in subscribers 10 days ago can be, at least partially, attributed to Dan Bongino’s public announcement and endorsement of Parler.
Cool. I have been seeing it for the past couples weeks wondering which planet it was since it is brighter than any star I know of. I often awake at about 5 AM to relieve my bladder and my bathroom window faces the northeast. I never noticed it’s tail, but then I never put my glasses on for my predawn trips to the Loo.
My neighbor and I saw it last night, and my $250 binoculars delivered a much more expansive image than his $1000 telescope! He was disappointed, but then we turned 180 degrees to look at Saturn in the southeast, and his mood improved remarkably!! My binos were almost useless (showing a little blob with ear-like bulges where the rings should be!), but he had a spectacular view of the rings! I have a big telescope too, but you don’t need one for this comet!
Yes Neo, you should enjoy being celebrated as “NEOWISE” for a while!
Neo;
Because the comet is “white,” it is deeply offensive to many blacks; in fact it is racist and demeaning to blacks.
After all, who points out “black” comets?
Nobody.
You seem to be a decent person, so I will assume that your racist attitudes are subconscious; that you are unaware of your racist thoughts and tendencies and, of course, your white privilege.
I suggest you attend some “re-education clinics” to learn the extent of your racist attitudes and to begin the process of purging yourself of your deeply held – but unknowable to you – racist mindset.
Next week you can sign up for such classes at the Lubyanka Building, Moscow , Russia, which commence August 1.
No need to do your fingernails; they will do it there for you, gratis. When they are done, your fingernails will be invisible.
In the meantime, you had better find a better name for the Neowise Comet; I’ll let you figure that out.
FWIW, I commented NEOWISE here three days ago. As usual, no hat tip. I don’t particularly care, but I will dig my heels in a bit this time.
neo: There’s a comet advertising you!
“Comet NEOWISE now visible in the evening sky”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/13/comet-neowise-now-visible-in-the-evening-sky/
–https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/07/11/wait-a-minute-wait-a-minute-you-aint-heard-nothin-yet/#comment-2505273
huxley:
I have wronged you grievously!
I actually forgot you mentioned it, and put the post up in reaction to an email someone sent me. Accept my abject apologies.
neo: Abject apologies accepted!
BTW, anyone attempting to see any comet should be aware that a comet, even a really bright one, is not a breathtaking experience.
Most non-astronomy-minded people are disappointed when I show them a comet.
huxley, I agree with you. I would recommend capturing the comet on film or digital camera but only if you can attach the camera to a tripod. A handheld smartphone will give disappointing results. If your camera has a manual mode, select the lowest f/stop and an exposure of about 30 seconds. If the image is washed-out then the sky is still too bright. Decrease the exposure until the sky is a shade of gray.
Brian Morgan: Astrophotography at the amateur level is a tough gig. When I moved to New Mexico from San Francisco, I considered resuming amateur astronomy, but I didn’t realize how serious light pollution has become *everywhere*.
Furthermore, as this article argues:
______________________________________________
What about Astrophotography?
Don’t.
Just don’t.
I know, I know, you want to. The urge to photograph what you see is almost irresistible. The problem is, beginners have no idea what they’re getting into. This is way more involved than you can possibly imagine. You’ve got a lot to learn, between the night sky and your new telescope. Don’t complicate matters by getting involved with astrophotography. What’s more, photographers, as a rule, have a harder time adjusting to astrophotography, than “civilians.” They assume their knowledge of conventional photography will shorten the curve for them, but usually the opposite happens. Next to department junk-scopes, astrophotography is the #1 reason people drop out of the hobby.
My friend and fellow club member Herb B, who is really good at this, estimates he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars, over a decade of his life, and untold thousands of rejected images, to get where he is today. When new members excitedly ask him for advice on getting started in astrophotography, his usual response is this:
“Don’t.”
–Ed Ting, “So You Wanna Buy a Telescope… Advice for Beginners”
http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html
huxley, agreed, it’s taken me three years to get to where I am. Regarding light pollution I am thankful that I have suburban/rural Bortle 5 skies. Many people on forums have terrible skies.
I find that most people over-complicate the process of exposure determination. My rule of thumb is to adjust the exposure so that the sky background becomes a shade of gray. You don’t want black. Of course exposure depends on your location, telescope, and camera. All things being equal I can get away with a 2-minute exposure with my Bortle 5 skies but if I were in or near a city I would have to cut it back to about 20 seconds.
Another challenging aspect to astrophotography is that we are dealing with very low signal levels. That galaxy you are trying to capture is very dim even after using a 2-minute exposure. In order to get a good quality image you need to take calibration frames, what are called “darks”, “flats”, and “bias”. Once you calibrate each of your “light” frames then you can “stack” them.
It is not uncommon for me to capture 60 2-minute exposures. The final stacked image is equivalent to 120 minutes. I have gone for as long as 11.6 hours to capture a faint galaxy:
https://astrotuna.com/m81-bodes-galaxy-in-11-6-hours/
A comet like NEOWISE is much brighter than a faint galaxy. A person with a camera and a tripod can get good results with a single exposure. I was pleased with my images of Hale-Bopp taken with a $200 Kodak digital camera and a sturdy tripod.
Brian Morgan: You are a better man than I, Gunga Din!
Props to you for hanging in and doing the work. Your M81 shot with a 2.8″ refractor astonishes me. (Good grief, the spellcheck here is correcting me on “refractor.”)
Here’s a guy who did a stacked shot of Jupiter in *daylight* I can’t get over:
https://vanderbei.princeton.edu/images/Questar/jupiterDaytime.html
He took it with a Questar 3.5″ Maksutov-Cassegrain and like any astronomy kid who cut his teeth on “Sky & Telescope” in the 60s I lusted for a Questar. I still do, a bit.
huxley, You don’t see many Questar’s these day! When we were kids Questar had full page ads in Sky & Telescope magazine.
My friend in the UK, who suffers from 52 degrees north latitude, has gotten remarkable lunar images in daylight.
I think that astrophotography can be a terrifically rewarding hobby for someone with the time, the weather, and financial resources. Thankfully I was able to get by with $2000 but I have pretty much pushed the envelope with my present setup. I’d have to spend $5000 for the next quantum leap in quality.
I see that the greatest challenge for newcomers is, well I’ll be harsh, a natural tendency to over-complicate things and an unwillingness to experiment. They would rather purchase high-tech software than learn the fundamentals. Of course I understand that not everyone has the time nor the good weather to endlessly pull levers and experiment.
Also, without fail, almost everyone new to the hobby rejects lunar and planetary imaging even though these are some of the brightest objects in the sky. That is not to say that imaging is trivial but you can get good results with less-than-ideal atmospheric conditions.
And there are more opportunities than just lunar, planetary, and deep-sky astrophotography. There is the study of Exoplanets and Variable Stars.
Here is my first Exoplanet a couple months ago:
https://u235-varstar.now.sh/gallery/hat-p-5-b
an Eclipsing Binary Star:
https://u235-varstar.now.sh/phase-plot/v1053-her
and a non-Eclipsing Variable Star:
https://u235-varstar.now.sh/phase-plot/yz-boo
There really is no end to the fun but unfortunately we are all limited by the weather. I am hoping that the new Solar Cycle will yield more cloud-free skies. There is evidence that Cosmic Rays affect cloud formation. Cosmic Rays are at the highest during times of solar minima like now.
If anyone is interested in a quick way to visualize the phases of the Moon over the next 30 days, here is a web application I wrote to show off the abilities of an open source library I wrote and continue to update:
https://u235-astro-library.now.sh/
Everything updates in real-time so there is no need to press your browser’s refresh button.
Brian,
Wow!! Thanks for sharing your hobby. You have done some impressive work!
Re astrophotography: every time I think about getting into it, I just lie down until it goes away, and then tell my wife how much money we just saved. Just looking at planets, asteroids, and comets is enough for me.
The best astronomy investment I have made recently was constructing a concrete pier on which to mount my telescope! Fiddling with tripods and their foibles is a waste. And it is lovely to center a planet and then go in to dinner for a couple of hours, and on coming back out looking into the eyepiece and finding it still where you left it!
I saw a good comet from a commercial aircraft some decades ago. I can’t remember which one it was–Hale-Bopp in 1995, maybe?–but it was bright and impressive up there. It really helps to be way above the cloud layer in the evening.
Ray Van Dune: Astrophotography can be pricey but I refuse to drop $1000+ into a new camera. The most I’ve ever spent was $400 for a 10 year old cooled CCD, and my scope was used at manufacturer-hosted star parties. I paid $500 for it; regular price $800. My mount is 50 years old, a gift when I was 12 years old. It hasn’t got Go-To capability but I get around that problem by plate solving. A lot of the add-ons I’ve designed and built myself through a combination of 3D printing and Electronics 101. Yes, I’m cheap but my cheapness brings me untold satisfaction.
Ray Van Dune: Regarding your pier, that’s great! Unfortunately I live in a heavily wooded area. I would have to build three piers to get good coverage of the sky. Do you have to re-run your “electrics” from the house out to the pier each time? Half of my set-up time is deploying the power to various consumers: camera, mount, dew heaters, flip flat, two raspberry pi’s, a router, laptop power, and CAT5 cable that connects my home network with the telescope. So my time is split in two parts: (1) plant the tripod, level it, mount the telescope, (2) the “electrics”. It would be nice to have a permanent observatory but I believe I’ve gotten a much longer lifetime out of equipment bringing it inside after each use, however I do leave the mount and electrics outside if I get two or more consecutive clear nights but I always bring the scope in for fear of mold and mildew forming on the optics.
Texan99: Weather is the key (and light pollution). If I lived 200 miles to the northwest I would have many more clear nights. I can’t justify spending lots more money with the weather around here. Hale-Bopp was great. Before that was Comet West in 1975. I was a student in Arizona at the time. Early one morning I drove far from the city. It was twilight. The eastern horizon had a thin orange glow. The comet’s head was just above it. The comet’s tail fanned-out and stretched overhead. This was with the unaided eye. Really spectacular!
Rufus T. Firefly: Thanks for your kind words. In an alternate universe I would be a professional astronomer (sigh).
By the way, last night’s attempt at NEOWISE was thwarted by clouds, however tonight looks promising.
“Thanks for your kind words. In an alternate universe* I would be a professional astronomer (sigh).”
You and me both!
*And, if you discover that alternate universe you can win the Nobel for Physics!