Comet NEOWISE at Dusk

Back during the pandemic (July 2020) I heard about comet NEOWISE that was going to pass near earth and might be bright enough to be seen even in urban areas, like Richmond, Virginia, where I live. I figured that I might as well try to photograph it, and I went to a driving range a few miles west of my house further out in the suburbs, and chose the driving range because it had an uninterrupted view to the northwest, where the comet was supposed to be visible. I went at dusk, got my Olympus Pen-F with my 40-150mm zoom lens set up, and waited till it got dark. I used a star map app on my phone to find the approximate area where the comet should be visible, pointed the camera that way, and started the exposure. My Pen-F had a feature called “Live Time” that let you do a long exposure while it updated the monitor frequently so you could see how the exposure was coming out. Amazingly, on my first try, after a few seconds, I saw the comet appear right in the middle of the frame, and that’s where this photo came from.