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Comet ISON update!


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ISON would have been the 5th naked eye comet of my lifetime after Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, Holmes and PanStarrs. I never saw McNaught (2006) or Halley (1986) and am too young to remember Comet West.

Hale-Bopp was definitely the best of those I saw by far, above 1st magnitude for many months, and visible throughout much of the night. I'm suprised you didn't catch Comet Holmes in 2007. I remember "independently" discovering it when I noticed a new 2nd magnitude "star" in Perseus - thought it might be a nova until I noticed it was a bit fuzzy!

We are definitely well overdue a decent comet I would say. Still there are things to look forward with the Rosetta mission next year landing on a comet.

To be honest I don't even remember hearing about comet Holmes. Halle-Bopp was impressive, especially from the middle of the North Sea :)

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To be honest I don't even remember hearing about comet Holmes. Halle-Bopp was impressive, especially from the middle of the North Sea :)

Ahh, Comet Holmes. It was a fascinating object, and one of my first forays into imaging. Here's my capture of it on 5th December 2007. Cant remember the setup. I think this was a single exposure. I recall it was a bright fuzzy patch, easily visible to the naked eye and almost overhead

11152177436_a3b0f8e745_c.jpg

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ISON would have been the 5th naked eye comet of my lifetime after Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, Holmes and PanStarrs. I never saw McNaught (2006) or Halley (1986) and am too young to remember Comet West.

Hale-Bopp was definitely the best of those I saw by far, above 1st magnitude for many months, and visible throughout much of the night. I'm suprised you didn't catch Comet Holmes in 2007. I remember "independently" discovering it when I noticed a new 2nd magnitude "star" in Perseus - thought it might be a nova until I noticed it was a bit fuzzy!

We are definitely well overdue a decent comet I would say. Still there are things to look forward with the Rosetta mission next year landing on a comet.

Comet West in March 1976 was a magnificent sight. Ironically, owing to all the media hype over another failed 'comet of the century'....comet Kohoutek in 1974....there was very little coverage of comet West. Yet its tail rising above the horizon over an hour before sunrise was a splendid sight, and it is so far the best comet I have seen and the only one with any really substantive tail. Comet McNaught was nothing like as spectacular from the UK. Comet West reached magnitude -3 and was allegedly visible in daylight ( I saw it around mag -1 ).....yet for some reason it often gets forgotten about and never seems to make the list of 'great comets' though it definitely was one.

Comet Kohoutek is often regarded as having been a dud, yet it was not as much of a flop as ISON, and in fact reached a respectable magnitude 2 and I spotted it quite easily. It just didn't live up to all the ' magnitude -15....brighter than the full moon' hype beforehand. You'd think the meda would have learned their lesson this time.

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ISON is the first comet I've properly followed and I've enjoyed the experience even though it's wiffled away to nothing now, thanks to all in this thread for the reports, here's to the next Comet :smiley:

The really disappointing thing with ISON is the aspect of having waited over a year for it. I can recall telling my wife, over a year ago, that there was a bright comet on the way but we'd have to wait over a year for it. It's that long countdown, and the build up of anticipation, that is the real let down.

Oh well....there's always the next one. Hopefully not too long a wait.

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Thanks for that! I realise that I posted the wrong image of it, this is a better one:

What a fantastic image Luke! Holmes was such a pleasant surprise in the Autumn of 2007, particularly after my disappointment at not seeing McNaught. A really bizarre object though - more like an expanding bubble than the traditional view of a comet. When I first saw it, it was very star-like, at least to the naked eye. I wonder if anyone stitched together images of it taken over several weeks to make a movie? That would be fascinating to see!

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Comet West in March 1976 was a magnificent sight. Ironically, owing to all the media hype over another failed 'comet of the century'....comet Kohoutek in 1974....there was very little coverage of comet West. Yet its tail rising above the horizon over an hour before sunrise was a splendid sight, and it is so far the best comet I have seen and the only one with any really substantive tail. Comet McNaught was nothing like as spectacular from the UK. Comet West reached magnitude -3 and was allegedly visible in daylight ( I saw it around mag -1 ).....yet for some reason it often gets forgotten about and never seems to make the list of 'great comets' though it definitely was one.

Comet Kohoutek is often regarded as having been a dud, yet it was not as much of a flop as ISON, and in fact reached a respectable magnitude 2 and I spotted it quite easily. It just didn't live up to all the ' magnitude -15....brighter than the full moon' hype beforehand. You'd think the meda would have learned their lesson this time.

I think the media only seem to latch on to a comet when its been predicted well in advance, as with the case of ISON and presumably Kohoutek. The problem is that they don't always realise how unpredictable these long-term estimates of comet behaviour are, and they tend to hype up the most positive predictions. There have been some very nice comets like Hyakutake and Holmes which put on a good display quite suddenly, and therefore didn't grab any media spotlight.

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Speaking of Comet Holmes ... I didn't realise it is back for its next perihelion in 2014. I'm guessing another 2007-style outburst might be too much to hope for, however.

Now look. Let's not all start piling on the pressure for Holmes to perform. We all did that to poor Ison and in the end he just couldn't cope and went to pieces! ;)

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Now look. Let's not all start piling on the pressure for Holmes to perform. We all did that to poor Ison and in the end he just couldn't cope and went to pieces! ;)

Holmes is predicted to only reach mag 13 next year, so I don't think anyone is 'bigging it up' too much! The amazing thing is how it brightened from mag 17 to 3 within 42 hours, back in 2007. Apparently, that's an increase in magnitude of a factor of about half a million! I remember it well, and if think it's what refuelled my interest in astronomy.

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Comet Kohoutek is often regarded as having been a dud, yet it was not as much of a flop as ISON, and in fact reached a respectable magnitude 2

Yep, I remember that Kohoutek, it was a dud both in respect of the hype leading up to it (but then that is not new) and the miserable magnitude it reached,  after one has previously seen Arend-Roland and Ikeya-Seki, they were something to write home about and one was hoping for something similar from the K. !

The other big flop was Halley. Is no one saying how dissapointing that was after waiting all those years ?!

Hope Halley does better for all you youngsters when it returns :)

I think ISON was spectacular : the first one that I have seen die in (almost) real time, thank you SOHO/LASCO that was a good ride :)

And I am eagerly awaiting the analysis(postmortem) by the professionals.

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Nope, it will be even worse in 2061.

Oh drat ! Does this mean that I should stop work on my immortality pill ?

Or is that one of 'those' comet predictions waaahaaa, I'll get my coat ;)

"Comet West in March 1976 was a magnificent sight..."

Yep, agreed.

and Comet errr  Bennet ? 1969?70?

I discovered that on the drive from Sao Paulo overnight to Belem, beautiful in the dawn sky, magnificent,

trouble was others had discovered it before me so haha! my name was not attached ;)

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Yep, me too. The only comet I have seen you could really call a COMET.

There's few things more awe inspiring in all of astronomy than watching a decent comet tail start to rise above the horizon over an hour before sunrise. But even comet West with its tail of 10 degrees or so pales into insignificance next to the 19th century comets with tails of 70 degrees. We're long overdue for another one. The great thing about astronomy is that it could be discovered today.

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Did anyone on here see Halley last time it was here? I only had some 10X50's back then but after a number of nights out in the cold on the moors... I did finally get rewarded.

Hale Bopp was by far the best I've ever seen..... I've hard all about the 1976 comet West recently and seen some amazing images but have no idea why I never even knew about it.... Guess my dad wasn't interested at that time of his life... otherwise he'd have told me about it, after all I do remember him getting me to look at Kahoutec (73?) through his nelson style telescope at the time, I'm pretty sure I told him I could see it, but whether I was just pleasing him or I actually did see the 'blurry thing' it hasn't lodged itself in my memory!

 RIP ison.

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Saw Halley through my Tasco 'refractor' (being kind about it) from the light polluted city centre.  It wasn't exactly a spectacle, but it was satisfying to be able to locate it with rather basic equipment and only a beginner's knowledge.

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