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My Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner Tale of Woe


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New here! This is just my second post.

Early in the morning of Sept. 9 I attempted to observe Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. This was only the second time I'd been out with my new 8-inch f/5.9 Dob, the first telescope I've owned since the cheap little 3 or 4-inch reflector I had as a kid. I was excited.

I knew it would be near Capella, and I *thought* it would be viewable with binoculars. My plan was to spot it with binoculars first so I'd know where to point my finder scope, then take in all the glory.

Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, etc. In other words, I failed. I couldn't find with with my binoculars, so I was left panning the sky near Capella, and Auriga in general, in the desperate hope that I'd just happen by it.

I still had a good session. Orion was up, so I was able to check out Mintaka and the Orion nebula. Also, in a throwback to one of my first observations as a kid, I looked at the Pleiades. But I hadn't seen what I'd gone there to see.

What I could have used is an app where I could input the RA/Dec of 21P at approximately the time when I'd be observing (I'd found a site that had that info), and it would tell me what the brightest naked-eye star is near there (in this case I already knew it was Capella), then the next star closer that would be in the field of view of Capella once I had a scope on it, then the next one after that, etc. Basically, something that would let me "star hop" toward 21P. Does this exist?

In hindsight, I guess I could have done this myself on paper as a fallback plan.

My apologies if this belongs in Beginners>General Help.

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Cartes du Ciel is freware and shows the comets position quite accurately. As does this website:

https://theskylive.com/21p-info

You can print a chart off for use on site.

The comet is moving quite quickly - 2 degrees (4 moon diameters) per night so it can be hard to keep up with it's position. It's also quite hard to see even with a small scope so 50mm binoculars will prove very challenging I feel.

 

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An app like SkySafari (the "Plus" version will do for the demands of an 8") will allow you to choose objects from many lists - double stars, solar system objects as planets and comets etc. You just select Comet 21/P Giac.-Z., and it's position is displayed, centered, with many additional infos.

I always found it difficult to spot 21/P with 7x50 or 10x50 bins; it's small, and even in the 130P Flextube not very impressive. When I spotted it near M 35 three days ago, I first mistook it for the dense open cluster 2158 accompanying M 35.

Stephan

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