Comet 17/P Holmes short comments

by various authors

Alexander Avtanski: Great view from here (South San Jose / St. Teresa). WOW! And I thought that the moonlight might be a problem. This thing is amazingly bright!

Very unusual looking too (for me at least) - very dense coma, a bright nucleus (or is it called "pseudonucleus"?) slightly off-center. And the color is like nothing I've ever seen in a comet.

Michelle Stone: It's definitely a naked eye object right now although I had to put on my glasses to focus clearly. At 64X, I can see a very bright core and an extended halo. The halo is somewhat compressed on the southerly side. I see no tail. Overall, the color is a "shaded white". The color has light cream taste to me bordering on yellowish. The compressed side gives hints of reddish tones.

I'm using my 80mm 480FL scope.

John Bowen: There is definitely something there, non stellar through 10x30 binoculars and higher. Visible to the naked eye, right where the map on 'Space Weather' shows it should be. Not as bright as Mirfak and brighter than Delta Persei. Looks white to me...

Dennis Beckley: Wow! Just cleared a neighbor's large tree and easy naked eye.

When I first looked at it through the 10 X 70's it looked like a pale mars sans icecap!

Spooky pale yellow color. Definite disk shaped. Looks evil! Halloween must be just around the corner!

Greg LaFlamme: Holy-moly that's cool! I've been out front looking at it In my 10" f4.5 @ 127x it looks like a yellow Planetary with a sharp stellar core. There is a blurry fan on the eastern side of the core but still inside the bright area, that seems to make the core look off-center. After only a short time observing it and slowly cranking up the mag. It appears to shimmer and gust around but that may just be the atmosphere, either way, its beautiful and easy to find! Good luck.

Michelle Stone: I noticed a change in brightness of the halo, even appearing to change shape. I too do not know if it is the atmosphere or whether it is the comet. Very cool.

Alexander Avtanski: Here is approximately what I see with my 4.5" Orion StarBlast:

http://astro.avtanski.net/sketches/17P_Holmes.jpg

Color intensity is slightly exaggerated - that's on purpose to show the cast the way it looks to me.

Darrell Lee: Pretty cool. Definitely a naked eye comet, and yellow, and larger than the nearby stars in my binoculars. Thanks, Dennis, for posting about it.

Jim Bartolini: I, too, see a pale yellow-white core and halo, at both 33x and 60x, although in my area it's not quite a naked-eye object (no shielding from Luna). Beautiful nonetheless!

Rich Neuschaefer: That thing is bright! It does look yellow. A bright spot with a relatively even glow around it. Maybe three times the diameter of the spot?

I found it with my Canon 15x50 IS binocular and got a closer look with my Leica 77 Televid APO spotting scope zoomed to 60x.

James Turley: Brought out Ayumi, my 114mm ED scope, 12mm Nager IV. Sure enough, orangish fuzz ball just where it should be. 7PM Went back out at 8pm and picked it up in binos... 9pm...naked eye..

Almost ... just almost can tease out a tail..but the striking thing to me is the orangish color.

Bill Cone: Aex's sketch is spot on. And it is naked eye from my backyard in Moraga. Just got home from dinner. Nice eye candy for desert. Makes a neat right triangle with Delta Persei, and Mirfak. In my 80 mm refractor it looks to have a slightly brighter glow to one side.... which side? I'd say the North side if I was looking through a reflector, but through a refractor, I'm not sure if it is reversed! Very yellow, and a very bright core with a nice halo/glow around it. Sulfur colored planetary is what it looks like.

John Alfonso: I have to agree with Florian from Palm Springs. Damned strange object and kind of unsettling to look at. Easy to spot naked eye from my deck in the Richmond hills as an "extra" star in Perseus. Clearly has some angle to it in 10 x 50 binocs and in my 80mm f5 at 53x it's a bright yellow planetary nebula. Alex's sketch is right on.

Couldn't be the return of the Great Pumpkin, could it?

Dan Kaeo: Awesome! This is my first comet! I sketched an offset view like that too. Very cool.

Unfortunately, when I tried to show my Wife she looked in the big end down at the primary and when she couldn't see anything, grabbed my secondary and moved the scope around, and now I have 4 fingerprints on my secondary. She missed with the thumb, LOL. :-(

Jay Reynolds Freeman: Even with haze and Moon, Comet 17/P Holmes was a very nice view in my 14x70 binocular tonight. At about 22:30 PDT 24 October 2007 it was definitely nonstellar, showed no obvious asymmetry, and appeared perhaps a few tenths of a magnitude fainter than delta Persei.

Matt Tarlach: Wow! Am I glad I checked my email tonight before hitting the hay. Comet 17/P is bright and easy in Perseus, appearing stellar to the naked eye and definitely brighter than 3.0. In 8x42 binos it is nonstellar, resembling Jupiter seen in binos but not quite round and with a possible diffuse extension to the E. The color is interesting, I make it noticeably warmer than nearby Mirphak and quite un-comet-like. Any other comments on color? I've never been good at judging color in sky objects.

Tony Franco: Just spotted it right now.. Yup, does look like Jupiter in my 12x36 CanonIS Binos. With the Shorttube 80mm grab&go from the kitchen, definately fuzzy with a hint of tail. Easy nekkid eye even with almost a full moon and the kitchen light on.

Steve Gottlieb: most folks don't seem to be mentioning the outer halo. If the main, bright disk (including inner fan) is 1' in diameter, the much fainter envelope doubles the size to 2', though I think it's somewhat larger than that.

John Pierce: I can only say... WOW.

Dragged my 10" out on the patio. stuck my 35mm in. was some whispy high clouds obscuring perseus, so I just kept locating the brighter stars in my 9X finder and looking at them at 32x til I found the snowball... cranked up to 100x, its great.

I swear, the core is modulating slowly, almost like its turning, but thats probably an illusion...

Paul Sterngold: Found it through the moonlit, somewhat hazy skies. I had to use a pair of 10x50 binocs at first but once I'd located it, I could easily see it nekked eye. In the binocs, it was like a fuzzy star at first, then it seemed to have a bright core with a nearly equally bright coma, though this could be my imagination. It was orangey-yellowy, but I'm sure the smoke augmented this. Amazingly bright yet small. This will be fun over the coming days.

John Pierce: I upped to a 5mm takahashi le a coworker loaned me today... in my 10" f/4.5 coulter, thats 13 arc minutes of total FOV, I estimate the snowball at 2 arc minutes.

Very distinct structure to the core, while the nearby 11 mag stars in my FOV weren't moving at all, the inner core of the comet looked like it was tumbling.

I'm not seeing any positive signs of a larger tail.

Jay Reynolds Freeman: I have the feeling the comet is continuing to brighten. From Palo Alto at about 2330 PDT 24 October 2006, my naked-eye observation had it just barely noticeably brighter than delta Per, and at about 0050 PDT 25 October it was a little brighter still -- perhaps a few tenths of a magnitude brighter than delta Per.

I did not mention in my first report, but it was clearly yellow through my 14x70, and also yellow to the naked eye.

Reynoldo: Wow, amazing how differently we all perceive things. With my 11" Starmaster "Shorty," I couldn't detect any sign of a tail at all. Nor did I notice any color. To my eyes, it was completely colorless, no yellow cast at all. Interesting.

One thing's for sure, it is beautiful to behold. I described it to some of my astropals the same way -- like a cosmic dandelion gracefully floating through the heavens. What an unexpected treat.

Pentti Kanerva: I tried to gage the brightness with defocused 9 x 25 binoculars. The comet appeared a close equal to theta of Auriga, which is 2.7 mag according to www.calsky.com, and definitely brighter than delta of Perseus at 3.0. It'll be fun to see how bright it eventually gets, having improved slightly over the predicted 16.9! Enjoy. -Pentti