C2020 F3 Comet NEOWISE
C2020 F3, also named Comet NEOWISE, was discovered March 27th, 2020 by astronomers of NASA's NEOWISE program using the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope. Although faint, it was the first "naked eye" comet since Hale-Bopp in 1997, and will not be near Earth again for 6700 years.

This image is a composite of comet-only and star-only images to compensate for the comet's motion relative to the stars. For the comet-only image, each sub-frame had stars removed in PhotoShop via Spot Healing Brush, then were aligned by comet and combined in Nebulosity. For the star-only image, sub-frames were aligned by stars and combined in Nebulosity, then had all but stars removed in PhotoShop via inverse star-mask. Rest assured the process was more tedious than it sounds.

Scope/Mount: TS-Optics PhotoLine 130mm F7 APO Refractor with Astro-Tech AT2FF Field-flattener, Celestron CI-700 Mount
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MMC monochrome with ZWO LRGB filters
Guiding: QHY5L-IIM through Orion Thin OAG, PHD guiding software
Exposure: RGB: each channel (5) 60 sec @ gain=139
Software: Nebulosity, PhotoShop CS2
Comment: 07-18-2020, Tierra del Sol, CA, good conditions.