Comet Q4

Is the tail visable with 10x 70 bino or a 60x spotting scope? I can't locate
this, I'm right in the center of two rivers and always have clouds or
constant fog rolling thru. I have a Meade lx-50 and dont even set it up
because of this problem. I'm viewing from NE Pa.

"steve sauchinitz" wrote in message
Is the tail visable with 10x 70 bino or a 60x spotting scope? I can't
locate
this, I'm right in the center of two rivers and always have clouds or
constant fog rolling thru. I have a Meade lx-50 and dont even set it up
because of this problem. I'm viewing from NE Pa.

Using 8 x 40mm binoculars 30Km east of London I easily found this comet near
61 Cancri at 22 hrs GMT on the 19th May.
Although my local sky is slightly orange ( from sodium lighting ) in that
direction, I thouht I could just detect a short length of tail pointing away
from the direction of the sub-horizon sun.
I find the comet this week to be considerably easier to see than M44 Beehive
cluster in Cancer. I would say that the total combined brightness of M44
seems less than the bridhtness of Q4. I can only barely detect the comet
by naked-eye view, though I'm sure it must be strikingly obvious from dark
sky sites.

Anthony

On Wed, 19 May 2004 22:56:19 -0400, "steve sauchinitz"
wrote:

Is the tail visable with 10x 70 bino or a 60x spotting scope? I can't locate
this, I'm right in the center of two rivers and always have clouds or
constant fog rolling thru. I have a Meade lx-50 and dont even set it up
because of this problem. I'm viewing from NE Pa.

I've found it quite easy to detect a lengthening of NEAT in the
direction of the tail with naked eye, bins and telescope (80mm and
102mm refractors). However, it's a pretty subtle feature of the comet
and surprisingly hard to image well.

Here's a component shot of NEAT from last night (no details on the
photo and as I'm at work now, I don't have access to the original)

http://www.pbl33.fast24.co.uk/NEAT.jpg

I've uploaded it just to give an idea of what it looks like through
bins/scope. The photo shows the comet's head far brighter than you'd
see it visually. If you squint hard at the image so that you can just
see the brighter stars, then the comet starts to take on it's visual
appearance. The field of view in that photo is approximately 1.5
degrees for the long edge of the image rectangle.

A heavily processed version made from this image and 31 others can be
found on my recent images page (address in my sig.). The direct link
is here for convenience...

http://www.pbl33.fast24.co.uk/NEAT_190504_32x_800.jpg

--
Pete Lawrence
http://www.pbl33.co.uk
Most recent images http://www.pbl33.fast24.co.uk/recent_images.html