Comet NEOWISE

At twenty past midnight GMT last night the clouds finally cleared and we had a chance to search the northern sky for Comet NEOWISE. Despite the hour, the sky was still far too light but the Plough was easy to find - at top left - and we knew that the comet was somewhere below and slightly to the right.

A good pair of binoculars was enough to find it, the camera was deployed and....

....began to produce some fuzzy results. This was taken on an eight second exposure but even that short time is enough to draw out the stars as the Earth rotates. The comet, and particularly its tail, is rather disappointing because the contrast was so low but....

....a bit of fiddling with the settings produced this image, the best we're likely to get.