What did you see tonight?

[josefk]

Fabulous view of the comet last night. First picked up through 8x42 bins at 19:12 (precisely! 🙂) and then detectable naked eye at 19:25 against a SQM reading of 18.02 (pointing the SQM at it, not at zenith).

It was much bigger and higher than i was anticipating. In supported 15x56 bino's with a 4.5 degree FOV i could detect the tail to nearly 2x the FOV, possibly a bit more. A strong coma and possibly nucleus within that even at x15. Maybe 1-degree long very bright cone at the leading portion before just being bright for another degree or so. Quite thick shorty behind the coma and the coma quite obviously not quite at the front of the comet. Remarkable.

Nearby Epsilon Serpentis was visible naked eye before the comet and a useful marker to keep swinging the binoculars back up to it. After any kind of red light to make notes the comet disappeared to the naked eye for a minute or two so this was handy.

Being early was key to the best view. After this binocular observation i drove to my normal obs site and set up my scope and had another look. The comet had sunk ~ ten degrees in the intervening time and the loss of altitude completely negated the benefit of aperture and magnification with the scope. It just looked like a small fuzzy globular at the lower elevation.

PS. quick field notes added - that's a 4.5 degree FOV:

Edited 2 hours ago by josefk
added thumbnail

[Froeng]

Taken with a 200mm equiv lens last night. 19x1.6” @ISO1000…

I could not see anything naked eye though!