ASTRO: Daytime McNaught

Posting again because I forgot "ASTRO" the first time.

After many evenings and one morning trying to see McNaught, I
finally caught it - in broad daylight. After hearing that
others have done it I gave it a shot.

Since I have an old scope with manual setting circles, I had
to center on the sun to reset my circles. Then, first, I moved
to Venus because I've seen her in daylight before so I knew
what to expect. This confirmed my navigations skills via the
setting circles were still good. I normally star hop.

So, then I move to McNaught's co-ordinates and wham! There it
is!! I'm not practiced at determining brightness, but it
appeared about twice as bright as Venus, albeit fuzzier. I
could even make out some of the tail.

However, it was telescope only. Couldn't find either the comet
nor Venus naked eye. I've seen Venus with Mk. 1's several times
so was surprised I couldn't this time.

Anyway, I used my home made digital camara mount to take some
pics. Here's the best one. First au natural, then enhanced.

Taken at 2:24 PM Pacific time from the LA area.

Brian
--
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On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:33:47 +0000, Skywise wrote:

Posting again because I forgot "ASTRO" the first time.

After many evenings and one morning trying to see McNaught, I
finally caught it - in broad daylight. After hearing that
others have done it I gave it a shot.

Since I have an old scope with manual setting circles, I had
to center on the sun to reset my circles. Then, first, I moved
to Venus because I've seen her in daylight before so I knew
what to expect. This confirmed my navigations skills via the
setting circles were still good. I normally star hop.

So, then I move to McNaught's co-ordinates and wham! There it
is!! I'm not practiced at determining brightness, but it
appeared about twice as bright as Venus, albeit fuzzier. I
could even make out some of the tail.

However, it was telescope only. Couldn't find either the comet
nor Venus naked eye. I've seen Venus with Mk. 1's several times
so was surprised I couldn't this time.

Anyway, I used my home made digital camara mount to take some
pics. Here's the best one. First au natural, then enhanced.

Taken at 2:24 PM Pacific time from the LA area.

Brian

Well done.
Had a lot of trouble picking it up in daytime today (and failed completely
yesterday due to constant clouds and haze).
We had a clear spell just before midday but the sky around the Sun was
very bright, to a diameter of about ten degrees (combination of low
elevation here in the UK and living under a major airport flightpath so
lots of scatter). I was scanning with 8x20 bins but had a lot of trouble
keeping my eyes focused on infinity. However on a couple of occasions,
distant birds and aircraft crossed the comet's position and a 'spot' was
detected with averted vision-did not see anything directly. Absolutely
no chance of a naked eye view.
Venus can be quite easy with the naked eye in mid winter, but conditions
need to be just right, and I dont think I have managed to pick it up less
than around 20 degrees from the Sun. I had expected that the comet, being
somewhat larger than Venus would be fairly easy to pick up since the Moon
is quite obvious despite the lower surface brightness-if memory serves,
Venus is 2-4x brighter. Maybe if I get another clear spell over the next
day or two, the greater elongation will help with sky brightness, but by
Saturday it will be on my southern horizon-not many chances left for me.

Phil Bishop