by Phil Chambers
Yes, the comet was an unexpected surprise.
I was there but feeling not up to par so when Paul Sterngold mentioned a binocular Messier survey, I decided to join him.
I found it great fun with the laptop on my lap and my 12 x 60 Gary Russell reject binocs. Finding the Virgo galaxies was an exercize in memorization as I would have to take the binocs down to look at the chart and start all over again when i picked them up.
In fact it was such fun that I plan on documenting one of my own.
The group at Coe was bigger than i expected and there were a lot of folks I didnt know. But all were friendly and polite.
It was nice to see all the "regulars" again. Between weather and vacation, I havent been out in awhile.
The question that Paul and I had was M107. It was so dim that it couldnt have been the magnitude noted by the sky. We looked at it in Pete S's C11 and it was still a very faint glow. Maybe there was some haze in that direction but it wasnt obvious. There was no way to detect it in the binocs although the field was obvious. (I think Paul said he saw "something" there but I didnt). 107 is listed as 8.1 and the Virgo galaxys are listed at 10.5 to about 11 and they were much easier to find.
The weather was surprisingly warm as it started off cold when the sun was up but never cooled down much from there. I didnt see any dew all evening on anything.