On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 5:54:55 PM UTC-8, Herbert Glazier wrote:
On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 5:40:30 PM UTC-8, palsing wrote:
On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 3:30:34 PM UTC-8, Double-A wrote:
On Monday, December 11, 2017 at 2:16:54 PM UTC-8, palsing wrote:
On Sunday, December 10, 2017 at 11:15:04 AM UTC-8, Herbert Glazier wrote:

I saw Halley comet when I was 5 or 6 Many moons ago.

No Bert, you almost certainly did not see Halley's comet when you were 5 or 6 years old. The last appearance was in 1986, and I rather doubt that you are only about 37 years of age now. The appearance before that was in 1910, and I doubt very much that you are 113 or so years old now.

It must have been a different comet that you saw when you were 5 or 6 years old. A good project for you would be to research what comet was both in the sky and was also a bright naked-eye object when you were about that age...


It was probably the 1910 one. Bert's been lying about his true age for years!

The 1986 return was a big flop. I couldn't even see it.

The 1986 return of Halley's Comet was difficult to see from the city. I had the advantage of having a telescope with accurate setting circles and a good ephemeris for the comet, so I was able to sweep it up pretty easily. Once I knew exactly where it was, I could see it, very faintly, with the naked eye, but it would have been nearly impossible to find without knowing just where to look for it. Once I got out into the desert to my dark-sky observing location it was quite easy to see, a marvelous through the telescope. However, there have been many comets in my lifetime that have been far better to view, including Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake, and McNaught, the great comet of 2007. Even though McNaught was definitely a southern-hemisphere object, from my dark sky spot we could see *7* spikes in the tail at sunset, but not the comet itself. It was amazing! Here is a picture...

http://twanight.org/newTWAN/photos/3001025.jpg

... but from North America, the comet itself was well below the horizon at sunset and all we could see was the tail going left-to-right above the sunset. Just imagine cutting off the lower half of this photo, and that is what I saw. Very memorable. I was lucky to meet Rob McNaught a couple of years ago when I was part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Springs in Australia, that was a treat for me.

Imperial thinkers claim comet's tail passing Earth gave it its first life.That has to be the greatest BS in the world.Reality is Earth gave life to the universe,and in just 285 years our solar system will have humans and bacteria on every rock the size of Pluto. TreBert