NeoWise tagged

[Dave2]

Shot this last week. It's not often we have such a photogenic comet in our backyards!

[JOC]

I am a happy astronomer type person 🙂.  My son and I have just been up on the grass verge on a spotlessly clear night with my 2nd hand pair of 10 x 50 Nikons that a SGL member recently sold to me and with the help of an updated Stellarium installation on my portable, thanks again SGL we've both seen the comet 🙂 Half way between the point of the ploughshare and the horizon.  Once found we could just about see it naked eye, but that direction is my worst for light pollution.  Sort of a fat fuzzy denser greyness, with quite a long pale tail above it.  I've got my doubts that it would have all fitted into a telescope view even if I had set up on the edge of the road.  The bins certainly seemed a good tool for the job.  Quite chuffed to be able to say we've finally seen it. 

[bomberbaz]

46 minutes ago, JOC said:

I am a happy astronomer type person 🙂.  My son and I have just been up on the grass verge on a spotlessly clear night with my 2nd hand pair of 10 x 50 Nikons that a SGL member recently sold to me and with the help of an updated Stellarium installation on my portable, thanks again SGL we've both seen the comet 🙂 Half way between the point of the ploughshare and the horizon.  Once found we could just about see it naked eye, but that direction is my worst for light pollution.  Sort of a fat fuzzy denser greyness, with quite a long pale tail above it.  I've got my doubts that it would have all fitted into a telescope view even if I had set up on the edge of the road.  The bins certainly seemed a good tool for the job.  Quite chuffed to be able to say we've finally seen it. 

glad you got to enjoy it so much, it has been a great comet for sure

[cloudsweeper]

I'm a bit late to this party, mainly due to cloudy conditions, but as it looked clear-ish early on, decided to have a go.  (It isn't returning for several thousand years!)

AR 102S frac at the ready, aiming low, NW (my least dark area of sky - I usually aim S, SE) I saw nothing around 11.20 until I enlisted the aid of Sky Safari.  A quick wideangle scan of the area later, and BINGO, there it was!  What a thrill - bigger and fuzzier than nearby stars, with a bright centre, and a pale, diffuse tail trailing upwards.  It looked good at x17, being seen in context so to speak.  I called "Got it!", and Mrs. Sweeper came out for a look.  Dropping the mag a bit to increase the exit pupil made the tail clearer.   

Having pinned it down, I then found it could be seen naked eye.  Said to be third magnitude, but that I guess is the integrated figure, so it didn't exactly leap out at me!

Comet 46P/Wirtanen last year was harder to find, and far less impressive.  

I was very satisfied after about two hours out, and even took in a couple of UMa doubles as well!

Doug.

Edited July 21, 2020 by cloudsweeper