Comet Holmes and an Elderly Rocket...

I ran out to continue my ongoing search for defunct 1950's space junk,
having seen on Heavens Above that the Vanguard 2 Rocket would be making
a 9.9 magnitude pass through Aquarius around 7:53pm DST. The Vanguard 2
Rocket had it's moment of fame on Feb. 17, 1959, when it launched the
Vanguard 2 Satellite. (Which figures...)
I set up my C8, found the easiest stars to nail along the rocket's
track line, turned on my shortwave to a time signal, and waited...
BINGO! At precisely 7:53:20pm DST, an easy dot cruised quickly through
my FOV! I would've been a few weeks shy of turning 9 when this sucker
went up...

I then turned my attentions to the notorious Comet Holmes. And my
scope. Given the clumsiness of a fork mount in the Northern sky, I just
picked up the whole contraption and turned it around to face Perseus.
The comet was still an easy naked eye object. I picked it up in the
finder and quickly started flipping eyepieces in my turret. The comet
has definitely grown... Tonight, the coma neatly filled the FOV of my
12mm Kellner at 160X. More pleasing views came at lower powers... I
could see very little detail in the coma, barely making out the almost
stellar nucleus at the tip of the blurry "fan." Is it just me, or is
the "fanward" side of the coma beginning to blow out like some kind of
cosmic seed pod? While one side of the coma seemed to still be
unnaturally sharply defined, the "fanward" side seemed to be blowing out
a bit, and much less neatly outlined...
VERY neat little comet! Seeing things like this make one's life a
little better somehow...
Marty