It is time to revisit the idea of photographing the comets since we are yet once again facing a unique astronomical event in the night skies.

General Information That No One Cares About:

Comet ATLAS (C/2020 M3) was discovered on June 27, 2020, by astronomers using the ATLAS survey, which aims to detect and monitor near-Earth objects. ATLAS gained attention in early 2021 due to predictions of its brightness. However, as it approached the Sun, it experienced some fragmentation, leading to uncertainties about its visibility as a bright object in the night sky.

How Can I See The Comet In My Location:

I would advise that you check the local news about the visibility of this astronomical event, as well as simply asking Google what time is it going to be visible in your location and which direction you should look at. (I suppose we all should be trying to find it in the same direction, but I am not an astronomer, so don’t quote me).

Easy-ish Way To Locate Atlas In The Night Sky:

I used an application called Sky Guide (available for iPhones, but there must be some equivalents for Android as well), and then all you have to do is point your phone in the sky and hope that the information is correct.

Disclamer:

At least from where I am at, you can’t see it with your own eyes, but maybe if you are in a darker place you would be able to actually see it. Shoot for the Stars, You Might as well See a Comet… or Not. Pretty much the similar experience, but this time I was a bit smarter about it.

How To See Where Exactly You Should Be Pointing Your Camera:

• Bring a camera with you
• Bring a 24-35mm lens with you
• Bring a tripod
• Hope that the lens is bright enough for your photos
• Locate the bright star that rises above the horizon just after sunset
• Take some photos in that direction
• Zoom in your wide angle photos
• Try to find the comet
• Change the lens to something more zoom-ish and try to find it again

Settings for Astrophotography:

Generally speaking, you should be shooting wide open, so F1.8 or F2.8 if you can. Your ISO potentially (and depending on the amount of the Moon) should be from ISO 800 to ISO 3200. Your shutter speed shall be calculated the following way:

If you have a full-frame camera, take 500, see what focal length you are shooting, and then divide 500 by that number, you will get a number of seconds that you can shoot without stars starting to trail. So if you have a 100 mm lens, it will be 5 seconds. You actually have to take a photo and see if it worked, or you need to shorten your shutter speed. For anything less than full-frame, make it 600.

And of course, find a dark place.

My Camera Doesn’t Want To Focus On The Stars

Well, of course, it is a little bit ambitious to ask your camera to focus on something super small and super far away in quite a dark place… so we will have to go manual and either focus by eye (thankfully modern digital cameras do well with focus peeking), or first focus on some far away tree or the horizon and switch to manual focus afterwards).

Composition

It would have been so lovely if we could get comet photoghraphy with some foreground and all, but it is bloody tiny, so if you want to properly see it in the pictures, you have to shoot something like 200 mm focal length which is no easy task for astrophotography without special equipment rotating your tripod head along… anyhow, if you can – add a mountain, a bush, a tree… something else that can add a story to your comet photos, otherwise they are as good as pictures taken from Google Search.

Post Processing

I’d say without involving Photoshop, just do a gradient mask in lightroom to the sky, add clarity, dehaze a bit (especially here we have limitless haze), contrast, see what whites, blacks, shadows are doing and if you need to change a bit the white balance. If you were fancy and included the foreground, another gradient there to lift the shadows a bit… and voila.

Final Thoughts

The truth is that you can’t see this comet in the sky with the naked eye, so photography is a trickery that allows you to find it, but it just doesn’t feel as magnificent to be able to capture it as it would feel if you could actually just see it. But anyhow, I wish you luck and patience. Enjoy yourselves trying to photograph it and let me know if any of this was useful.

Would you be interested in comet photography?