by Ron Bhanukitsiri
While waiting for the sky to darken to see any stars at all, I took a quick look at the TV-102 Light Cup's favorite object: Mars ;-). Whew, how the Mighty Mars has now dwindled into a Mini Mouse :-(. I thought I could see a polar cap, the phase was clearly seen.
Took a very, very long time to locate the Comet C/2002 C1 (Ikeya-Zha), forgot where my binos were. Could barely, just barely see the mag 4.4 star with great difficulty, 106-Nu Piscium at 6:30pm PST yesterday evening. It's too bad that this comet is in the western sky (my worst) and very low in the sky. From here, panning around finally located it. Wow! This is the first time I've seen a comet thru a telescope that really looks like a comet with clearly a tail and all. Unmistaken at 22x (40mm Pentax XL). Nice long tail at 30x (30mm Ultima), nucleus looked stellar surrounded by diffused glow. Tail and coma together takes about 1/4 of the entire FOV (about 1/2 degree. At 110x (8mm Radian), stellar nucleus appearance turned into a bright glow. Best coma view at 176x (5mm Radian) and 220x (4mm Radian, WOW! Very bright. The nucleus looked like some machinist putting a torch to a piece of metal that turns its center bright white with heat! Coma gave a hint of green color. Since most of the tail is now too dim, the comet looks like a "tear drop", especially with averted vision at which point I find myself almost bursting into tears ;-). It really gave me an impression of plunging down and heated up by the earth's upper atmosphere. Much, much brighter than its approx. mag 5 would suggest. Best comet view ever! But it would have been spectacular if it were near the zenith!
The time to watch this comet is NOW! You never know what will happen next. It's better than the comet Linear last year!