I saw a note on the Space Weather site that comet C220P/McNaught just increased in brightness. I looked up the coordinates (RA/Dec (J2000.0): 0h13m22s/+2°06’01”) using Stellarium. It looked like it may be visible from my location early in the morning. At this time of the year that is really early. Astronomical dawn starts at 02:36. I moved the Vespera 3 telescope to a location in the far backyard to have visibility to the east above the tree line where I thought the comet might be visible. At 03:00 after initializing the Vespera 3 telescope and programing the coordinates as a manual target I had the telescope look for the comet. I realized that there was still a tree in the way.

I moved the telescope, reinitialized it, and had it look for the comet again. At 03:30 the Vespera 3 telescope found the comet, and I was able to get an image. Even though the sky was getting brighter, I followed up with three more observations at 03:46, 04:00, and 04:18. By the time of the last observation clouds started appearing and the sky was getting too bright. Sunrise was at 05:26.

The comet C220P/McNaught was not very bright. The estimated magnitude was +8.7 and is just barely visible in the unprocessed jpg image. To make the comet more visible, I processed the RAW/TIFF file with PixInsight (GradientCorrection, SprectrophotometricColorCalibration, and NoiseXterminator).

The head of the comet has the green color from ionization of diatomic carbon (C2) and there is a short tail. I added the grid to the image to get an estimate of the length of the tail. The comet is still approaching the sun (perihelion on 14-June) so I am not sure if I will have another opportunity to view it again.

The unprocessed SOOT (straight out of the telescope) jpg and raw/tiff images for this and the other observations are available to view on my PhotoShelter site (20260606). Time-lapse videos recording the overnight viewing conditions (180° night sky and 360° little planet) for the night are available on my Time-Lapse site (05-June-2026).