Track Comet NEOWISE Live

If you are crazy like me. I have been up every morning at the crack of 3:45 AM to comet hunt, and surf fish. I really want to get a picture of a comet. I am learning how to shoot the night sky. It is fun and you never know what you will capture. The other night I had a shooting star streak through a picture. That is like fishing. Just keep pushing the button and hope you get something when you look at the shot later. The camera can see stars and objects better than I can with the naked eye. Those “mild” shooting stars that streak in a split second are the hardest to see, not for the camera.

Now we have comet NEOWISE streaking through our solar system. Daily I have been disappointed by clouds on the horizon at the beach. I keep going to the beach hoping for better conditions each day, clouds or fog, take your pick.
Now I am thinking I need to head inland more or just stay at the house and look from the field. There aren’t clouds on that horizon just some trees, but comet NEOWISE should be above the tree line by now. It is still visible in the northeast sky about an hour before dawn on the horizon. Soon we will be able to see NEOWISE in the evening sky just after sunset.

There is a live NEOWISE comet tracker enthusiasts can use to track the comet in real time. The official name is C/2020 F3.
The name NEOWISE comes from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This satellite (NASA space telescope ) is a wide array telescope that tracks Near Earth Objects (NEO). Put them together and you get NEOWISE. Those NASA folks can be clever.
Check it out this week and hopefully catch a glimpse of comet NEOWISE, it will not be back in our space hood for a very long time, 6,800 years long.

Another source for tracking comet NEOWISE is the The Sky Live Online Planetarium. It is an interactive online planetarium that shows the position in real time. This is a really cool space tool, or just Google … Comet NEOWISE path, and find all kinds of sources.