Billy Newman Photo Podcast | 150 Comet Neowise

Night Sky Podcast

Comet Neowise

Viewing comet Neowise during its passage in late July 2020, remembering sighting Hal Bopp in 1997. What is a great comet? Photographing the night sky with a high iso and a wide angle lens, Traveling along the John Day River,

Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen

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150 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Comet Neowise

Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in to this episode recorded for the first week of August in 2020. And wanted to jump into a couple of the things I've been doing through the month of July and some outdoor camping and travel stuff I've been up to. I was going to run down some of that in this podcast today. I wanted to talk about a trip I made to Eastern Oregon. I think like last week before last is when I was out in this area, and I was trying to get some good observations in for comet nowise I'm not sure if any of you guys got to check that out while it was in its prime viewing section there I think that was why we had kind of like the new moon before it switched over to being gibbous moon or nearly full moon like it's been the last week or so. But I think it was around the 15th through the 25th or so of July. There are some pretty good observations to be made of comet Neo wise, and I guess after kind of reading about it a bit, it's not considered a great comet, like Hale Bopp was, or I think it was I talkie 9996 we hadn't had a great comment in a long time I've ever seen those when I was a kid though that was pretty cool. Like watching the Hale Bopp come through for it seemed like three months or something you know that you're just kind of looking at that in the low corners of the northwestern and Western skies was kind of cruising across the skyline I remember that still from like, third-fourth grade when it was coming through, and I also remember the year before that, when like straight up in the air you know like straight up in the sky at night for it was only like a week or so I was a kid you know, but I remember for that week you can see a real bright two-tailed comet those guns I think I can't remember how to pronounce I think is how you talk here. I think it's it's some Japanese name. Pretty sure. But that was a really cool one. That one I still remember really clearly I was only like, I don't know, seven or something when that like when that comic came through. But I really appreciated getting to make some observations with that one as a kid. I missed Halley's Comet, though, back in what 87, I think, was the last one if it came through. And I probably will be the few years that you know that decade or two of the age range that doesn't get to see Halley's Comet in their lifetime. So I think I was born in 88, of course. So if I make it past 100, maybe you'll see it; what is it maybe like 80 something years, so it's probably not going to come back around until I think it's like the 2017 or 2000 80s that I'd have to make it to for to see Halley's Comet again, that'd be fun, but I don't know, maybe we'll see our future. The future is at that time. But it was really cool to get to see Comet Neo wise; It was just a little below what would be the legs and feet of Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, or like the big bear as it observed. But if you kind of look at the deeper part that we're all most familiar with, if you kind of consider Ursa Major, the larger bear constellation that it's structured on, if you kind of look down below the dipper is where I was able to make my observations of comet nowise. And over here in the elevation area that I'm at, in Western Oregon, it's about 200 or 300 feet above sea level. And there's kind of a constant problem with haze and with light pollution in this area. And I think it has to do something with the well, I mean, of course, you know, the amount of population that's around and also something about the air quality or about how the air kind of flows out around here that just doesn't ever seem to be as crisp or as dark as you can get up in the mountains. And, and really it's just like a stunning difference when you're able to get out further and make some more clear observations. You know, the level of magnitude of stars that you're able to reveal, just in a dark night, is so much more crisp and clear. It's just like a total difference. So it was cool too. I think I was first able to spot just a little fuzzy bit of a second magnitude version of Comet Neowise while I was here in town, but I tried to make a special trip out toward Eastern Oregon out into the desert just to do some camping stuff. But what I wanted to do at the same time was make some good observations and also try and get some good photographs of Comet Neowise as it was coming through during its period, where you could, you could make some, some good sightings of it, but it was cool. So going out to Eastern Oregon, as it got dark, a little past 1030 or so as you look to the northwest, you can really see the comet and its tail spread for a couple of inches in the sky. And I was really surprised to notice how little of it you could really make out to see when you're in an area of almost any light pollution, once you're back in town, or once you're in a lower elevation area. With some light pollution and haze around, it was really difficult to make out in the same way that I could out in the desert or out in the mountains. And so I thought it was pretty cool to get to see and get to check out over there. But yeah, it was a blast getting to do some stuff out in Eastern Oregon. I went over to the John de River area. And I checked out that area. There's a lot of public land out in that area. But there's also some, a lot of private lands too. It's just kind of an interesting area, how it has sort of broken up, and it was cool to get to go out to the head out to Madras, and then I took off and headed over East there until I ran into the john de River. And then I was able to use this map that I have to go through and find some open off or just the open roads that are, you know, smaller gravel roads that are set up to kind of traverse the backcountry out there. So I was able to find a few of those that were open and travel around on those for a while. That was pretty cool. I was able to find some dispersed campsites and set them upright along the john de River, which is really cool. It's a beautiful area out there. It's kind of interesting, and the john de river flows through this sort of. I guess it would be, and I don't know. It's kind of like Canyonland. And it's also sort of these rolling grass hills that sort of make up the landscape of Northern, northern, and northeastern Oregon. And I think Yeah, as soon as you kind of get a little for like a little north of bend is when you get out of the Great Basin area. And you start to get into another kind of landscape that seems to stretch up north of the Columbia River up into Washington. I've heard that some of it are from ancient deposits from the river systems in the waterways that were up there and how it was like there are old deposits and then an erosion that's happened from those rivers running through the area for such a long time. But, but really cool to see kind of the rolling hills and then some carved out canyons that go through the john de river area up there. When I found the campsite, I was at, and I was pretty far away from everybody. And I was really far away from any substantial town. I think it was near. I don't know, and I don't even know what it is. There wasn't anything there. When I drove through, there's a bridge and a couple of little ranch houses, you know, real ranches, right? Like just a little, a little, a little house like a little two-bedroom house and then 100 acres of cattle to deal with. So it seems, uh, seems like another life out there. I wonder how they're dealing with, you know, kind of the way the world is things are this summer, but it was cool. Yeah, getting out there. I went to already kind of set up my campsite, and stuff had my truck going. And that was all pretty easygoing. But then I waited till dark after 1030. Yeah, comet neowise is really visible up below the Big Dipper; it was pretty cool to get to see out there in Eastern Oregon really bright, really clear, you can almost make out the second tail. I have my binoculars with me. I think there are some ten by 40 twos. And those read really well to view it to view the comment. Like really crisp through there through the binoculars, and yeah, really easy to spot most of the night. Even just to the naked eye, it was really easy to spot. It was like, Oh, yeah, it's right there, there's a comment. It's just a big whisper in the sky. So it was really cool to get to view it; what I did is I set up my tripod, and I have my camera with me. So I set it up with a really wide angle. And then I was trying to get some photographs of it as it was, as the comet was sort of coming down to set on the landscape of the hillside, you know, as the hours went on into the night. So I think I stayed out until maybe one or two in the morning when the Big Dipper was sort of scooping down a little low onto the horizon. And then, at that point, the place where the comment was dipped below the horizon and then was out of view for the rest of the evening. And I think even into the morning. I think by that time, when I was photographing it, and it wasn't visible any longer. Up in the morning sky. I think they said you know, at first in early July, you could kind of view it around Capella, if you were able to get out early enough, say three or four in the morning, but as the direction, as it was moving, it was kind of creeping up pretty quickly, you know, day over day. Every day, it would kind of move a good chunk through the sky. And in the direction that it was moving, it was moving to be more visible at the nighttime, which really offered more hours of good observation time, which I thought was pretty cool to wait until it was really dark enough in the northwest view of the sky, probably about 1030 onward, is when you're finally able to make out this kind of finer points of light in the sky in that region. So it was really cool, set up the tripod, set up the camera, set up some manual focus to get it kind of set sharp at night, you can't, you can't use autofocus when you're trying to take photographs of the night sky and the stars because it just kind of seeps back and forth, you have to set it to manual focus and then ring out your focus ring to infinity. And then just back a bit. You'll notice this every time if you do it. It's really frustrating the dark because you can't really always make it out easily and edit your mistake quickly. But if you go all the way to infinity, and then they fix pictures there, the night sky, you're going to notice that these points of light that are the stars sort of end up a little fuzzy, and it's because all the way to infinity, for whatever reason, just isn't quite in focus at infinity. So you have to go all the way up to infinity and then back it off just a bit. And that'll nearly ensure that most of that part of the image is in focus the whole way. And it's difficult even if you do have an F stop that's a little more tightened out, say like an f4 six or something; you're still going to get a lot of that out-of-focus softness if the focus ring isn't really dialed into the right spot. So I tried to work on that a little. And yeah, dialed in my focus was able to set it up with reasonable ISO to get some images of the night sky and pick up some of those finer points of light, and then it was able to take a series of photographs in a few different locations out there in the john de River Valley, which I thought was really cool is pretty to be out there, and it was a nice night really warm in the River Canyon. And really remote to like I was mentioned I think I was the only person out there for a few miles I saw another group coming in on a like a little midsize SUV, and they were going fishing out of the bend in the river a couple of miles up from where I was the size of my truck down a little further and camped out. Just on the side of the river. It was a cool, nice Green River up to the kind of high desert tan rim rock that runs the area around there. So it was a cool evening, a cool campsite area. It's a cool spot to check out comet noise too. So I tried to check it out. Up until I don't know what 130 in the morning when I couldn't see it anymore and then spent the night out there out in the john de river area and then the next morning got up and try to check out some different roads and stuff that went around in that area. So it was pretty cool. I was glad I was able to get out there and do some comment watching over the last couple