Member Reports
From Ray Kaville:
Curiosity got the better of me. Approximately 22:16 on July 21, I stepped out and found the handle and Arcturus. So I ambled down the driveway out onto the street and then walked backward holding my 10×50 binocs (that I won at CSP; Thank You!) until I got visually tangled in the powerlines to my lovely neighbor’s house (with the nasty loud hound dogs that you can hear through the concrete walls in the basement). What to my wandering eyes did appear? Yes! NEOWISE in a pretty glorious configuration with a massively long tail. I tried without the optical aid, but no dice with all the streetlights and porchlights. I can only imagine what it might look like from a dark site under totally clear skies, but this was pretty exciting. According to SkySafari it was around 19 degrees up and 315 NW. Just under the cup of the big dipper. If it was pouring water, it would have spilled on NEOWISE.
Not a fantastic view, but an exciting one. If the situation arises, I will have to find a better spot and at least set up the 15x70s. Maybe even the refractor if I get energetic. Easy to spot in binocs with a reasonable NW horizon (mine was touching the tops of about 60-foot trees).
Saturn was a pleasure and about 10 degrees behind Jupiter if I calculate that correctly. A nice evening treat.
I was out on July 27 around 21:30-22:00 leaning on the phone pole across the street and searching seemingly in vain through the heavy overcast sky. I knew the comet was about 30 degrees up so I didn’t quit. There it was. Through the clouds I discovered the fuzzy nucleus and the main tail. As I covered my eyes (10×50) to block out the light I did see the ion tail faintly. Not the greatest view, but still exciting. It’s moving away and up the handle from the dipper cup. Oh my goodness. It’s almost August. So I guess we’ll see how long we can actually track it. Still from all the forecasts I really doubted that I’d find it at all in the mist. Glad I did. The Moon is coming on and I also snagged a couple of quick views of Jupiter and Saturn. Almost forced me to drag that heavy mount out onto the street and spend some time battling traffic.
Clear Skies!
From Michael Amato:
My brother Anthony took this photo of Comet NEOWISE while we were observing it. We, along with our friend Joe, observed this comet several times in both the morning and evening and we were able to spot both tails on the comet. On a Sunday morning, we saw the comet and two conjunctions. One conjunction featured the Moon and Mars together and the other was a close encounter of Venus and Aldebaran They were about one degree apart.
The three of us also have been observing Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. In Joe’s 8″ scope, Jupiter’s two big cloud bands showed up very nicely and Jupiter’s north polar cap was very obvious. We also enjoyed watching its moons dance around Jupiter. On Saturn, we could easily see the Cassini Division on Saturn’s rings. We also observed three of its moons, Titan, Rhea and Tethys. In June, Mars’ South Polar Icecap (SPC) was huge and I enjoyed looking at that. I also observed the SPC with my mounted binoculars.
I did get to view the Perseid meteor shower the night after peak viewing. I saw seven fast moving yellow meteors that. With my short tube rich field Newtonian scope, I was able to enjoy many different open clusters and asterisms. Viewing the Coathanger is considered best when using binoculars which is almost true but when observing this with a rich field scope, it is spectacular!! I also got up well before dawn to observe The Pleiades with my short tube scope. Believe me, all I could do is stare at this wonderful sight. Finally, I observed the Moon and Mars together on the night of September 5. Mars was less than half a degree above the moon. What a sight!
How I got interested in astronomy:
I was 11 years old and my brother and next door neighbor were 10 years old when we read in the New Haven Register that bright naked eye comet Arend-Roland would be appearing in our western sky for the next few evenings. We went outside to look that evening when we saw a bright meteor appeared in the western sky. Being new kids to astronomy we mistakenly thought this was the comet. The next day we talked it over and realized we saw a very bright meteor. The Register said the comet would be better placed to see that next night so out we went to hunt it down. This time we found Comet Arend-Roland right off the bat. Coming out of the comet was a bright anti-tail which pointed directly at the sunset. We simply started to jump up and down with excitement before we started looking at it with our 20 power hand held telescopes. We were so focused on the comet’s anti-tail, we never even noticed its other tail pointing away from the sun. Seeing that bright fireball and comet started me off loving astronomy for all these years.