by Dave North
Last night a bunch of San Jose (California) Astronomical Association folks went to Evergreen Valley College to hold a summer star party for the students and faculty, so Akkana dropped in on skypub.com and printed out a finder chart for the comet, hoping to give them a special treat.
Of course the "usual suspects" were all on display, but once it got dark she started hunting down Linear through the 6-inch dob without much luck.
We were sure it should be visible, even in the suburban spurge, so I soon joined the hunt -- but with no greater success.
I was certain the scope was pointed at the area shown on the chart, and I knew it had "drifted" a bit, but how much?
First, I did "quartering": a form of semi-radial search of the zone where it should be. This is good for three or four degrees in any direction if done carefully, but no bananas on the tree tonight.
So then I shifted over to sweeping, in the grand tradition of Don Machholtz, who first mentioned the technique. This can cover a lot more sky, but takes time.
Meanwhile, someone wanted to see M51, and my 12.5 was the logical candidate (largest scope at this informal gathering of ten tubes) so I showed the crowd two faint fuzzy blobs until they tired of it, then went back to the hunt.
Having lost my "zone," I more or less had to start again -- and it's not easy to do this kind of hunt with a hungry horde clamoring for views. Akkana was having no luck finding the dang thang, and nobody else could get a whiff of it either. So I started to lose patience ... when an airliner on the takeoff route went right through my field.
It was quite a site -- all the lights were on and it was close enough to see the window lights. Having caught it, I decided to track it for a while ... going ... going ... about seven or eight seconds and suddenly it flew directly through a spot of fuzz.
Hmm.
What's that?
I gave up the track, of course, and once the plane was out of the field it was obvious this was comet Linear at last!
This absurd way of 'discovering' a comet struck Mike Koop as so ridiculous he called it the "airplane comet" for the rest of the evening.
The nucleus and coma were obvious to everyone, even low in the glow, but the tail was a bit elusive to most of the unexperienced visitors (though most of us vets could see it easily).
Contrast was slightly improved by both a single polarizer and a skyglow filter, the latter working a hair better to my eye. This may, in fact, be the first time I've had any real advantage from the dang thing since I got it several years ago.
Unfortunately, the most interesting thing about the comet was not visible to the visitors, as they would look at it for ten or twenty seconds, then yeild to the next person in line. But since I was running a dob, I had to correct the view (and hog the eyepiece whenever the line died down a bit).
As time went by, it became obvious that this comet was moving *fast*. When I first found it, it was near a fairly bright field star, but as time went by it approached a nearby double. Movement was particularly obvious as it closed in on the pair, and downright zippy when it occulted one of them. At that point, it could be seen to obviously move in a single minute.
The next week should be an outstanding opportunity: don't miss it.
But there's a moral here -- if you don't want to spend a lot of time hunting it down, try to find a more current chart than the skypub link.