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. The comet is easily located by using alf CrB and the tail of the Big Dipper as a finding line to locate two of the northern stars of the pentagon of upper Bootes - 3.5 bet Boo and 3.5 del Boo. About midway and 3 degrees northeast of del Boo and 3 degrees northwest of bet Boo is mag 4.3 mu01 Boo. Its the first brighter star north of the del Boo - bet Boo line. Tonight - 10/21/2006 - Comet Swan was 1/2 deg south west of mu01 Boo. Tomorrow night - 10/22/2006 - Comet Swan will be 1 3/4 degs north of mu01 Boo. It is prominent and not difficult to locate. Detailed finder charts are not necessary to acquire the object. Comet Swan is moving up out of the ecliptic so extinction and position are improving. As the comet moves on it exit track it will get dimmer, but it appears quite bright now.
From my NELM map of the SPOC sky, this may be a good target to view from SPOC. From Little Mtn, NNW az 280-290 looks through the Bountiful light spike. From SPOC, there is a dark hole near az 290 50 alt over the lake.
Tonight is the Orionid meteor shower from a radiant at RA 6.3 Dec. 16. Watching all-sky for 10 minutes at 9:00pm, I saw one mag 3 meteor not aligned to the radiant and a second mag 3 that was aligned to the radiant. I am setting my alarm clock for 3 or 4 am to take a quick peak when Orion is nearing transit. The ZHR for the Orionids is 25. - Kurt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com