This post is for my astronomical friends, although I sent out an email, I'll post here so you can all see it. After some preparation and a short search with 7 x 50 binoculars, I found Comet Lulin, more formally C/2007/N3, early today at 1:00 AM, AEST (14:00 UT, 21 February). My email sent out just before 2:00 AM to some observing mates, bragging as I say of my sighting:
"Hi all,
I've just seen it, although Comet Lulin is not awe inspiring. Work required me to spend the weekend in Bathurst and tonight I gave it a go: it has been clear except for a few fast moving clouds around 11:50 pm. So using Dave's directions and Astronomy '09 I looked for it and found after a few minutes (at 1 am DST) from my balcony - in the eastern sky. It looks like a small and lumpy globular star cluster; it could be slightly oval; hard for me to say if it has a tail, maybe a darker site other than the mega-polis of Bathurst would help in seeing any tail. Size, possibly 10 to 15 arc min. (very uncertain about that); mag: around 6 to 6.5. I spent 30 minutes examining it in 7 x 50's and found that I could not extract any more detail other than what my brain can manufacture. Sky although clear was not very stable with lots of twinkle, air was nice and cool.
Now I'll stop bragging and go to bed, actually Guys, I was determined to start my observing year off after a month of bad weather and this didn't seem too hard if the clouds stayed away. Cheers, Peter"
Unfortunately, no drawing and no photo to share. A drawing through the binoculars wouldn't show much - a small, round, fuzzy blob in a star field, so I didn't sketch it. "Lumpy" in my email is a metaphor for irregularly bright. For a nice suite of images and some more observational history go to Garry Kronk's Cometography site; this is his Comet Lulin page. Astronomy Picture of the Day has an image as well. Anyway, the observing drought is hopefully broken.
"Hi all,
I've just seen it, although Comet Lulin is not awe inspiring. Work required me to spend the weekend in Bathurst and tonight I gave it a go: it has been clear except for a few fast moving clouds around 11:50 pm. So using Dave's directions and Astronomy '09 I looked for it and found after a few minutes (at 1 am DST) from my balcony - in the eastern sky. It looks like a small and lumpy globular star cluster; it could be slightly oval; hard for me to say if it has a tail, maybe a darker site other than the mega-polis of Bathurst would help in seeing any tail. Size, possibly 10 to 15 arc min. (very uncertain about that); mag: around 6 to 6.5. I spent 30 minutes examining it in 7 x 50's and found that I could not extract any more detail other than what my brain can manufacture. Sky although clear was not very stable with lots of twinkle, air was nice and cool.
Now I'll stop bragging and go to bed, actually Guys, I was determined to start my observing year off after a month of bad weather and this didn't seem too hard if the clouds stayed away. Cheers, Peter"
Unfortunately, no drawing and no photo to share. A drawing through the binoculars wouldn't show much - a small, round, fuzzy blob in a star field, so I didn't sketch it. "Lumpy" in my email is a metaphor for irregularly bright. For a nice suite of images and some more observational history go to Garry Kronk's Cometography site; this is his Comet Lulin page. Astronomy Picture of the Day has an image as well. Anyway, the observing drought is hopefully broken.
1 comment:
in Nova Scotia, Canada, I had a similar experience viewing from the city.I sincerely believe that these kinds of comet need to be viewed in a dark sky: Hyakutake was just a smudge in the city but glorious in the country. The hint is the "green" colour, which I believe is indicative of a young comet emitting mostly Cyanogen gas and little dust. The ion tails seem to get lost in the murk.
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