Cometblogging

[dherblay]

Tonight was the first reasonably clear night Cleveland's had in a week, so I took a look at the heretofore hyped comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT). There was far too much ambient light for me to ever get a naked-eye view, but I did locate it with binoculars. It's just a tiny little dim blotch -- not even third magnitude, I'd guess, and if it has any tail at

Comments

Sigh

[cactuswatcher]

I have impossible light problems from a neighborhood park in the evening, so it was hopeless for me to see anything of NEAT. I tried to see LINEAR a while back before dawn, but we had too much of a combination of haze and moonlight. Glad you got to see something. And Jupiter is always worth a look.

Re: Sigh

[dherblay]

Jupiter is, isn't it?

I was wondering if I should have made an attempt for the Beehive Cluster (which the comet was near last night), but I had so few reference stars I didn't think I would succeed.

Update

[cactuswatcher]

No baseball tonight so the lights went out early in the park. I still didn't see the comet. Venus was monstrous on the northwest horizon, and Jupiter bright near the zenith. Drug out my scope for a minute to look at Jupiter. I could clearly see three moons tonight, maybe my seeing was a little better, maybe I was using less power so I had a wider field of view.

[masqthephlsphr]

I've had some pretty good luck seeing astronomical phenomena even here in the big city. Of course, there's an observatory in the Oakland hills I've been two a couple times. Good for seeing the polar icecaps on Mars and the rings of Saturn and some other cool stuff. But there are amateur astronomers who set up their hand-made telescopes down in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco - good enough to see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. That was awesome.

I'm looking forward to seeing the broad scope of the Milky Way with the naked eye up in Guernville when I go camping this summer. Saw Mars pretty well up there too, when it was making its close pass to the Earth last summer.

[dherblay]

One of my favorite astronomical experiences was outside Café du Monde on Jackson Square in New Orleans, where someone had set up a telescope pointed at Saturn and was letting pedestrians have a look -- I don't think you can get much more light polluted than the French Quarter, and Saturn was spectacular.

Mars was wonderful last year. Enjoy the Milky Way!

[masqthephlsphr]

That was the circumstances where I saw Jupiter's moons. Someone just showing it to passers-by on the street. I was on my way back to my car from having drinks with friends. It was very cool!

On top of a parking garage

[ann1962]

The astronomy department here has a large telescope on top of a parking garage of all places. Every week in the summer they open it to the public and when Saturn was being viewed we went. Two summers ago I think. Incredibly clear and sharp image it was.

[rebekahroxanna]

I don't have a lot of patience with telecsopes. My favorites are camping out in Wyoming and seeing all those stars. Not much light pollution, a higher elevation, really great. The southern cross over the Serengetti. And, of course, two solar eclipses. (Saving up for that really long one in a couple of years.) I really like lunar eclipses, bloody moon and all that. It is awesome to watch the moon turn blood red. Oh, and whatever that comet was a few years ago that you really could see with the naked eye. I watched it while driving through either southern Indiana or Ohio. I still want to see northern lights.

[cactuswatcher]

I like lunar ecilipses as well. We just missed one that was on the other side of the world last week.

Like most people I've only seen partial solar elipses. I can remember a decade ago we got out of work for a few mintues to go outside for one that was maybe 70& total. People were standing around waiting for a turn to look into one of the few shadow boxes people had prepared. Then I noticed the ground all around us. Every place light was coming through the leaves on the tress there were nicely sized crescents of light that everybody could enjoy at once.

Solar Eclipses

[rebekahroxanna]

My first solar eclipse was happenstance. We were vacationing in Bonaire during a solar eclipse. The northern part of the island was going to have 3 to 4 seconds of totality. In curacao, there was about a minute of totality in the northern part of the island. So I bought air tickets and reserved a car for the day. We left Bonaire a sunny day and arrive in the rain in Curacao. We also got the very last rental car on the island. People were lining up to rent them and every last one was gone. (I had had to rent through a small local rental agency a couple of months before because all the majors were rented up.) We drove north without a map or plan until we saw lots of cars parked. We found a parking place and scrambled down to the beach. Several hundred eclipse chasers were set up with telescopes. Finally about the time the eclipse was to start the sky cleared. The first part of the eclipse is generally boring. Then the air temperature drops. I went snorkling while we were waiting and the fish seemed unaffected. Totality is awesome,

Re: Solar Eclipses

[dherblay]

Speaking of this, do you have the Turkey slides? And if you do, would you scan in the eclipse ones for me?

(We had about 3:30 of totality on Curacao.)