Nuttiest Bay Area observing experience EVER: Comet, blue sky, and snow

by Marek Cichanski

And, of course, Leonard's right about the danger... be SUPER CAREFUL! Remember, trying to look at something near the sun in binos is a perfect recipe for frying BOTH eyes... at once! If you screw this one up, you'd better hope that your white cane is a great conversation-starter, because your observing days will be over ;-)

Wow! That sucker is bright! Seeing it in the daylight wasn't even a little bit hard. I just found a shadow from a garage, raised the binos (making sure they were fully shaded before putting my eyes up to them), and there it was. Bright bright nucleus, and a decent bit of the tail. I managed to catch one or two brief glimpses of it naked eye.

Notice how Leonard didn't see it naked eye, I barely did, and Wags saw it easily naked eye. This fits quite well with my inability to see stars in the Finnish triangles, while Mark bags 'em by the gunny-sack-full.

And there was something else seen against the blue sky: SNOW! At first I thought it was a bunch of floating seeds blowing off of a tree, but then it started to come down in a shower - but didn't reach the ground where I was standing. At times it was coming down like a snow shower back in the Midwest, or up in the mountains. And wherever the cloud was that was producing the snow, it was nowhere to be seen. The sky was clear blue in all directions.

Crazy! I'll not soon forget looking at the comet through a snow shower in California in a clear blue sky.

Marek