by Robert Leyland
At around 8:45 it magically cleared away, and we had a very good night. Local equestrian campers stopped by for an impromptu star party, and we had great views of Comet NEAT, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter to show them.
Coemt NEAT is quite a nice view. Easily seen unaided, with a short tail low in the SW sky. In binoculars, and finder scopes (as well as Matt's TV Ranger) the comet shows a faint 2nd tail that extends a couple of degrees. It reached as far as M50, and it was quite interesting to compare a real comet with Mr Messiers pseudo comet.
In my 8" Dob, the head of the comet showed as a point with easily distinguishable coma. The short bright tail was fuzzier, but remained comparable to the finder view as far as length. The secondary tail however showed a faint blue tint, and extended several degrees, somewhat further than the lower power views could show. I watched the comet for well over an hour, and in that time the comet moved sufficiently to bring an 8th magnitude star from well outside the leading coma, to just inside. It's nice to see gravitational dynamics at work.
After the comet set, we had an enjoyable time prodding eye candy, looking at H2 regions in M101 with Doug's 18". Comparing the H2 regions in NGC 4459 (?) with the Vickers CCD Atlas in Steve G's 18". And trading views with Matt and Slava in the smaller scopes.
It all turned out pretty well, after what seemed like a pretty poor start.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 09, 2004 11:27:05 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 14:42:02 PT