Look at the sky: it is a show that you cannot miss.
Something phenomenal is happening and if you don’t see it, you’re out of luck because the next time this comet goes through the sky for us to see it will be in about 7,000 years.
Locally, photographers and onlookers have been searching for the best places to watch as Comet Neowise, discovered in March, hosts a show after sunset.
Photographer Tony Prince captured the comet in the skies above San Clemente and Laguna Beach, as well as Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert. This week, he heads to Bass Lake, near the Sierras.
“You have to be spontaneous if you want to hunt kites,” said Prince of Lake Forest. “It is so rare that there is a brilliant comet. It has the appeal of a solar eclipse, but you can’t predict them.
“You hate not going out there and catching him every night from a different place,” he said.
Prince has long loved photographing kites, an image he took in 1976 published in a local newspaper. Since then, only about four have passed close enough to be seen as well, on average one every 10 years, he said.
At first, the comet was visible at sunrise, so it had to leave for Joshua Tree at midnight to prepare for the photo shoot at 4 am.
But now that it appears in the late afternoon, more people will be able to catch the comet, although it can be difficult to see with the naked eye, so have binoculars or a camera with a long lens on hand.
Prince said to find it, look for the Big Dipper, reach out and reach your little finger and thumb out from the bottom and that’s where you can see it.
From the shore of Orange County, with all the lights from populated areas, the comet appears as a small ball of fluff. But go out into the desert or a remote area, and it can fill the entire lens of your binoculars or appear about the size of your hand, he said.
It’s a show everyone should be looking for in the coming days, he said. “If you did it once, for the rest of your life you would never forget it.”
Mark Girardeau, who runs the Orange County Outdoors website, ventured to Modjeska Peak last week with fellow photographers Royce Hutain and Patrick Coyne, the same trio who recently shared footage of the rare bioluminescence phenomenon that made the waves glow, to capture the comet on camera.
Girardeau suggests reaching a high point without streetlights or bright lights and using a telephone compass to help find the comet – look northwest with binoculars to scan over the horizon anywhere from 315 degrees to 330 degrees, he said.
He said that a DSLR camera could be used to take a long exposure in that general area and then zoom in later to see the comet.
The comet spans three miles across and is 64 million miles from Earth. The comet approached the sun on July 3 and is crossing Earth’s orbit as it heads toward the outer limits of our solar system in mid-August, according to NASA.
