Comet NEOWISE, July 2020, over The Lighthouse and pier at Margate, Thanet, Kent. Some nice reflections in the sea too from The Harbour lights and Lighthouse. A few fishing boats can be seen sheltered inside The Pier wall. Taken from the main sandy beach.

The original lighthouse was designed by the architect William Edmunds and was completed in 1829. It was destroyed in the North Sea flood of 1953. The design was a round Doric column similar to the lighthouse at Whitby.

A replacement lighthouse with an octagonal column was built in 1955. This lighthouse features on the series G Bank of England £20 note along with the Turner Contemporary.

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) or Comet NEOWISE is a long period comet with a near-parabolic orbit discovered on March 27, 2020, by astronomers during the NEOWISE mission of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. At that time, it was an 18th-magnitude object, located 2 AU (300 million km; 190 million mi) away from the Sun and 1.7 AU (250 million km; 160 million mi) away from Earth.

NEOWISE is known for being the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997. It was widely photographed by professional and amateur observers and was even spotted by people living near city centers and areas with light pollution. While it was too close to the Sun to be observed at perihelion, it emerged from perihelion around magnitude 0.5 to 1, making it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.[6] Under dark skies, it could be seen with the naked eye and remained visible to the naked eye throughout July 2020.[8] By July 30, the comet was about magnitude 5, when binoculars were required near urban areas to locate the comet.

For observers in the northern hemisphere, the comet could be seen on the northwestern horizon, below the Plough or Big Dipper. North of 45 degrees north, the comet was visible all night in mid-July 2020. On July 30, Comet NEOWISE entered the constellation of Coma Berenices, below the bright star Arcturus.