Kurt, I observed Hartley last Sunday in my 14 inch dob and posted two sketches on my blog: http://jaysastronomyobservingblog.blogspot.com/ I used a 10mm Pentax XW for the one sketch which showed the inner details while I used a 24 Panoptic (wrote 32 on the sketch since I had tried a 32mm 2 inch on it also) and in that view it was a large, fuzzy faint ball, but not the size of the full moon. I would estimate it to be about 1/4 but this was from my backyard in Herriman and I was looking north over the SLC Valley so LP had to impact my view. I also saw it on Monday the 11th and Tuesday the 12th in 10x50 binoculars and it was very faint. Had to use averted vision to confirm it and a current map. Not sure if that is what you wanted. On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
Has anyone recently seen 103P Hartley, described in Yoshida's Comet page below. At 4:30am MST, 10-18, it is about 2 degrees north of eps Aur on the zenith with the Moon below the horizon. Is the Yoshida note that it is "very large similar to the full moon" overstated?
Yoshida's Comet http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html
- Kurt
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103P/Hartley 2
Now it is 5.1 mag (Oct. 7, Juan Jose Gonzalez). Very large similar to the full moon. Very bright and visible with naked eyes. It is approaching to the earth down to 0.12 A.U. In the Northern Hemisphere, it keeps observable all through this apparition until 2011 June when it fades down to 17 mag. In the Southern Hemisphere, it becomes unobservable temporarily from late September to mid October. But then it keeps observable in good condition.
Date(TT) R.A. (2000) Decl. Delta r Elong. m1 Best Time(A, h) Oct. 9 2 28.99 56 29.5 0.146 1.092 126 6.0 1:15 (180, 68) Oct. 16 4 26.97 49 19.8 0.125 1.072 124 5.4 2:47 (180, 75)
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