You may have a better view from west of the valley, rather than Little mountain. I've never had good views of faint, fuzzy objects in the western half of the sky, from there- at least since about 1980. Good spot for morning comets, though- as long as Venus isn't too close, eh? ;o) Thanks for the excellent report. --- Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
I got away for a quick trip up to Little Mtn. at 9:00 PM tonight to see if I could locate C/2006 M4 (Swan). This was a little late, the best time being right after sunset. By 9:00 PM MDT, the comet was only around 30 deg alt in the NNW sky at 290 az. A better time for tomorrow night at around astronomical twilight at 8:00 pm., when the comet will be at about 55 alt, az 280.
In a mag 4.3 heavily light polluted sky and use 8 x 35 binoculars, I was able to easily find the coma of Comet Swan at 30 arcmins s.w. of mu01 Boo. The nucleus was probably around mag 6 and a diameter of 5 to 7 arcmins. Looking through this urban sky, the tail was not visible.
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