Last week, I was told to take a look about sunset, Australia time, and after two tries and an hour's vigil, I managed to see a very dim comet with a rather short tail.
I had been getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated because it's not often that I -remember- to go and see these celestial events. For example, I forgot both the Perseids and Leonids shower this year (mid-August and November, respectively. I think)
And for once, I remembered to go and watch for this comet, I even set my cell phone alarm (and the alarms on the cell phones of everyone around me). Day one met with no success, not sure why-- probably I didn't go and look early enough.
The second night, we went out to look as soon as the sun had set. And we were on the roof of a house, and were able to see all the way to the horizon. Nothing. Just sky. It was still pretty bright, right after the sun set, of course. Eventually Venus made her appearance-- wonderful, that gave us a little bit of something to watch around, I was told that McNaught would appear around Venus, or between Venus and the setting sun.
Watching, waiting. One or two other stars twinkled out around the east and also above us, but no sign of the comet. I left our friend Dan on the rooftop to watch for the comet while I went downstairs to organize the dumpling dinner for the house. I popped back up a few times but nothing. Below us, the grocery run for the extra dumpling skins and soy sauce came home to the garage, and laughed at us for still waiting-- but between the time that the car pulled into the garage and they came back upstairs, the comet had appeared!
It was fuzzy, near the horizon, and the short tail pointed straight up. I got the entire house up on the roof looking at the comet, including the two nine-year-old girls.
Fast forward. Every night since then has been overcast or even rainy. And tonight, on the drive from Adelaide to Melbourne, we stopped at a dark, quiet town near the state borders.
I went out a few times to look for the comet, expecting it to be lower than Venus on the horizon, like it was last week.
Looking, looking, looking. Wondering if I missed it after all, even though it was pretty bright when I started looking for it.
All of a sudden (again), I glanced up, a little farther than I was expecting, and there it was! And this time, it had a tail, a nice, significant, worthy tail. This was about 9:30pm or so.
As the night wore on, 10pm, 11pm, the tail got brighter and brighter. The comet is pretty close to the horizon, but the tail! It's bright, fans upwards and curves ever so slightly to the right (the north, here). The comet dust even makes the neighbouring stars twinkle ever so slightly.
It isn't as bright as Hale-Bopp from 1997, but, WOW, that tail is definitely spectacular.
Have you all heard my story of Hale-Bopp? When I was in college, I often returned home late at night, after rehearsals or shows at the theatre. It was a rare day that I would get home before dark. My car was parked outside in the driveway, and I would step out of my car, and I'd glance up at my sky and look at the stars and say goodnight on my way in. "Goodnight, Jupiter. Goodnight, Orion. Goodnight, Big Dipper, North Star, Casseopeia, Cephus, Draco." And one night, I looked up, and greeted my stars, and there it was! In the north east sky, a bright, fuzzy comet with a bright, short tail.
Hale Bopp was brighter, but McNaught tonight, definitely had it beat as far as spectacular tails.
If you haven't seen it, find out how you can, because it was definitely one of the top five celestial moments in my twenty five years of stargazing.
Love,
Debs
11:58pm, Tuesday 23 January 2007
1 comment:
Okay, so Sky and Telescope says that the comet itself is no longer visible in the northern hemisphere, but that the tail should still be obvious. From my view of the very long tail, I think it is quite likely that you can see the tail of the comet. So go out there tonight and look!
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