by Stacy Jo McDermott
Last night I rushed home from work so to get the 120mm up and going in time for Comet Ikeya-Zhang. Everything was proceeding nicely. Finally darkness started to descend and I started scanning the skies for IZ. (Mind you it wasn't completely dark but dark enough). As I was scanning in the area I thought to be the area for the comet, I found a fuzzy. "Hmmm, well, it's tail will probably show better as it gets darker" I thought to myself. However, I don't remember it being that large the night before. After about 5 minutes, I slew the scope to where this item was and noticed that it hadn't changed at all. Went inside to get my comet article from the web. Came back out...looked again through the scope, looked through the binoculars when it hit me, I was looking at M31. Talk about doh! Now you'd think that someone who was looking at the comet the night before would be ! able to discern it from an M object...hey, never said I was a perfect observer!
So, I had a good chuckle - did find the comet, it looked quite stunning again. Won't get tired of looking at it I suspect.