This is probably best called a "draft" version of this image, because it could take me several weeks to get more comfortable processing something like this. So, don't pixel peep! Nevertheless, I was hoping to find some darker skies to image this comet, and so I took a field trip to Mt. Laguna, about an hour east of San Diego, and over a mile higher in elevation. It is classified as a Bortle 3 zone, although because NEOWISE is so low on the western horizon, I wasn't able to take full advantage of that sky darkness, because I was imaging right back towards the California coast that I just left! Still, conditions were much better than at my house. Unfortunately, there were also some intermittent clouds in the direction of the comet. You can actually see some evidence of this in my image of the crescent Moon that I posted yesterday, which was taken as I was setting up my equipment. In combination with some time wasted trying to figure out the best exposure, this limited my imaging session, and so the image below only represents 17x30s light frames, at 200mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, on a Nikon D5600. I used DSS to stack, and although it is a great program (and free), it didn't do the best job combining the comet and stars, so there are some artifacts. Gradients were also a huge pain, which speaks to my inexperience with these images. In any event, the image is much better than what I was getting at my house!
Click for larger size.
Edit: Please also see the image in post #4 below, as I think it shows the comet in more detail, despite the star trails (from alignment method).
Edited by Tom Glenn, 24 July 2020 - 06:58 PM.