Comet Neowise.

Saturday 11th July 2020

I made the decision late Friday evening not to head up to the Brecon with a few photographer friends, but to stay local and try and get my 1st Milky Way core photograph of the year. I knew there would be a good chance of seeing Comet Neowise within my home town of Barry even with lots of light pollution around the area.

So I made the short drive to Southerdown which is a fantastic place to look at the night sky. I can honestly say that I’ve really missed my astrophotography during the lockdown period, there is just something about the night sky that fascinates me, but I do find going out at night very creepy at times, especially when your all alone! 

Once back in Barry I took a drive down to Barry Island, I parked up on Nells point (which is the former site of Butlins Barry Island) you could just see the moon had just started to rise over the old Barry Dock Lighthouse, providing it with some lovely back lighting, so quickly set up my camera gear and grabbed a few shots!

At about 1am I jumped back in the car and headed to the location I had planned for Comet Neowise, it wasn't the greatest of places as it lacked foreground interest but it did have a clear north facing view. As I got out of the car I could clearly see the Comet with the naked eye, and I was quite surprised at how high it was. I stayed for a while grabbing a few different compositions before getting back into the car and heading home.

Overall it was a successful 3 hours of astrophotography, plus I was home by 2am which is always a bonus lol, hopefully I’ll get another opportunity to photograph Comet Neowise before it disappears forever, and if I do I’ll definitely be heading to darker skies…