I decided to try for another image of the Neowise comet last  night. I knew the location had an interesting old abandoned house on the property and I also knew the comet appeared beneath the big dipper. My hope was to be able to capture the big dipper, comet and house all in one shot. 

My friend Eric and I went out and waited for darkness to set in.

I knew I needed a wider lens than the 70 mm used for the first image and so I took my 50 mm f1.4 prime on one camera body and my 24 mm f2.8 prime on the other. 

As darkness fell the dipper appeared very high in the sky, almost overhead. It was pretty obvious that the 50 mm lens would not do it. Too bad, I wanted the reach it would give and knew the 24 mm would render the comet quite small. 

Never mind, I quickly set up my shot with the 24 mm which also meant I now had to cross the road side ditch to get under and beyond power lines overhead - following the lead of Eric who already had that figured out.

The comet was not as bright as 2 weeks ago but gradually appeared on queue below the dipper - which was gradually moving closer to the horizon as time when by. A waxing moon did us the big favor of setting below the horizon before things got really dark. The few clouds present when we arrived disappeared and even the voracious mosquitoes gave us a break around 1030.

I took shot after shot every few minutes hoping to get the dipper, comet and the house in the frame. Gradually the stars came into my field of view, first the bucket then gradually, one by one that stars of the handle.

It all worked out perfectly. With the handle fully in the frame the bucket was gradually moving off to the right side an soon to go out of the shot. Once in the right place with all the stars, the comet and the house nicely framed up I experimented with the shutter speed and ISO. 

We were both pretty confident by about 1130 that we had the images we came for. Feeling pretty proud for executing the plan we headed home leaving the bugs and howling coyotes to their own.