McNaught from Benicia

by Darrell Lee

Tonight I drove up Cambridge Drive in Southampton, the highest hill in town, not expecting much, because the clouds were all over the northern and eastern sky. But the western sky was clear when I arrived. I found the comet at 5:36 p.m., much closer to Venus than I expected. Most reports had it 20 degrees right of Venus, but it was actually about 10 degrees away, the width of my hand, rather than a full handspan. By now, five days after I started looking for it, the comet was much lower than Venus. It was a naked eye object after 5:43, when the skies darkened a little more. The comet's tail was about 6X the width of its nucleus in my 10X42 binoculars, and its apparent magnitude was about -3. It was dimmer than Venus, but probably brighter than Sirius would be under the same sky brightness.