Comet Machholz is visible to the "naked eye" tonight. If you follow the V of the Hyades there is a star about 10 degrees away. The comet is about 3 fingers widths from that star a little north of the line from Hyades to the star. It is about the same brightness as the star. Dave
DunnDave@aol.com wrote:
Comet Machholz is visible to the "naked eye" tonight. If you follow the V of the Hyades there is a star about 10 degrees away. The comet is about 3 fingers widths from that star a little north of the line from Hyades to the star. It is about the same brightness as the star.
Dave
Agreed, although I can see why you put naked eye in quotation marks. With fairly dark skies, after first using binoculars to find it and then with averted vision I could see it "naked eye". In binoculars (11x70) it was fun to see a fairly bright star swimming in the outer edge of the coma. Pulled out the Astroscan for the first time in years and was some surprised that even with that I still could not see an obvious tail. At best the coma seemed a bit flattened on one side and extended very slightly on the other. Patrick
When I saw that moonrise wasnt until 11PM, I took a quick trip up Emigration Canyon to Little Mountain. Machholz was entangled with a fairly bright star named 30 TAU which is visible itself unaided so I dont claim to have seen it unassisted. I my 10x50 binoculars, I could see an hint of the ion tail to the northeast. The Dust tail to the southwest was too bleached out by 30 TAU to be detected. It was 31F with a very slight breeze. Hands were numb after 20 minutes so I didnt stay longer than that. But I did manage some binocular deep space objects. M31: In the bright sky to the west was nice but M32 and M110 were not seen. M41 below Sirius was amazing. Many stars resolved. I must get this one in a telescope. M46, M47: off the back of the big dog. One is just fuzzy the other is partly resolved. M36, M37, M38: all were visible in the same field of view, a nice set of contrasting clusters. NGC457: easy to spot glow in within Cassiopeia. NGC2244: Easily spotted with the glow of the Rosette Nebula around it. Looked for but not seen. M79, M81, M82, NGC281 Clear Skies Daniel Turner __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
daniel turner wrote:
I my 10x50 binoculars, I could see an hint of the ion tail to the northeast. It's way too nice out to keep my observatory closed so I opened up and tried a few CCD images of the comet. Alas, the coma is so much brighter than the tail that by the time any tail showed in the image the coma was way overexposed.
However, moving the aim point about 15 arc minutes to the northeast so the coma moved out of the field the tail Daniel mentioned popped right out. Lots of detail. Here's a one minute exposure with an ST-237, "unphotoshopped", 12x15 arc minute field of view, through the C-14 operating at f/3.0: http://www.trilobyte.net/paw/temp/TEMP007.JPG Now I'm wishing I had my Schmidt camera installed. Hmmm, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should install it... Patrick
I was caught by surprise with last night's clear skies. But I dragged the 10" outside to get a look at Machholz and other goodies. From my house (East bench between Big and Little Cottonwood), the comet was a pretty easy naked eye target.. No detail, but the smudge was obvious. Through my 10" there was only the tiniest hint of tail. Detail in the head wasn't bad, though. Of course, there are still plenty of Xmas lights all over the neighborhood and snow bouncing the light back up, so it was a surprise to see anything at all.
I ran outside around 10:30 with the 15x70's and my 35mm SLR on a tripod to sneak a few shots in before the clouds rolled over. The comet was definitely naked eye even from my West Jordan home. The tail is very hard to see, I would agree that instead of a tail it looks more like the coma's flattened in that direction. I took about 8 shots varying between wide field views including Orion, the Hyades, and Pleiades. and a few closer shots of just the comet and a very nice 4th mag? star that was on the outer edge of the coma. A very nice view in the binos. After 10 minutes or so the clouds rolled in and the fingers were getting cold so I went in, I'll post the pictures when they're finally developed. I need a digital SLR (sigh) Howard --- Michael Carnes <moogiebird@earthlink.net> wrote:
I was caught by surprise with last night's clear skies. > the comet was a pretty easy naked eye target.. No detail, but the smudge was obvious.
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participants (5)
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daniel turner -
DunnDave＠aol.com -
Howard Jackman -
Michael Carnes -
Patrick Wiggins