andrew@cadomin.UUCP (Andrew Folkins) (11/14/85)
In article <1343@decwrl.UUCP> fisher@scotty.DEC (Burns Fisher, MRO3-1/E13, DTN 231-4108.) writes: >I was out looking for Halley's comet tonight after seeing the posting a few >days ago saying that it was moving between Orion and the Pleades. [..] >me if what I saw is likely to be Halley's: > >Description: A star-like spot with a fuzzy halo right next to the middle star >in Orion's sword, and probably dimmer. I could see the middle star with >naked eye, but only with binocs could I see that there were really two (and >the fuzz). > No, that is not Halley's comet. It sounds more like M42, the Orion Nebula, which IS the middle star of Orion's sword. Halley's comet will be quite close the the Pleiades during the next few days. Through a good size pair of binoculars and with dark skies, they should both be in the same field of view. It's path, from about Nov 14 to 18, is something like this (please excuse the crudity and lack of accurate information, I'm doing this from memory - see the latest Sky & Telescope or Astronomy magazine for a slightly more accurate drawing). <- about 1.5 degrees -> * ^ * * | . * N * | | x x x x x The brightest of the Pleiades is first magnitude, Halley's is about 7th or 8th, making it over a hundred times fainter than the stars shown. It will take a bit of effort to find, but if you examine (or draw) the star field on consecutive nights the motion will be apparent.
rdp@teddy.UUCP (11/15/85)
In article <642@cadomin.UUCP> andrew@cadomin.UUCP (Andrew Folkins) writes: > >Halley's comet will be quite close the the Pleiades during the next few >days. Through a good size pair of binoculars and with dark skies, they >should both be in the same field of view. It's path, from about Nov 14 to 18, >is something like this (please excuse the crudity and lack of accurate >information, I'm doing this from memory - see the latest Sky & Telescope >or Astronomy magazine for a slightly more accurate drawing). > > <- about 1.5 degrees -> > > * > ^ * * > | . * > N * > | > | > > x > x > x > x > x > My thanks to Andrew, as I and my wife were able to very rapidly find Halley's last night using a pair of 7x35 binoculars. (this was Nov 15 at about 1:00 AM EST). It was a bit farther north than the track desribed above, but the guide is close enough. The sky was a s transparent last night (after a passing cold front had cleared the clouds out) as I had ever seen it. The Orion Nebula, to the naked high, looked HUGE!. Halley itself looked, at first, like the proverbial fuzzy star, but after our eyes were dark-adapted, it truly looked like something that simply did not belong there at all! This is the first comet my wife and I have seen. I have spent a long time dabbling in astronomy, and was most pleased that I found it so easily, and that it was so obvious, but I thought my wife would be dissappointed by the lack of tail, etc. She found it straight away, and looked at it without saying a word for about a minute. She then said, "Are you SURE that's Halley's comet?" After checking what star charts I had and finding no other object in that position, I said "I'm sure." Her response was great. "NEAT f***ing S**T!" she said (she is normally not prone to this particular style of speaking). She thought it was simply wonderful to actually see a real comet. So did I, but us old hats have to maintain a bit of decorum, eh what? She made a very interesting observation, "It looks as if the tail is right behind it pointing directly away from us." Now how did she know that? She said she had the impression of looking at somethinh that was long and narrow from the end. My impressions were of a fairly well defined central point, albeit somewhat fuzzy, with a halo whose brightness diminished as one moved away from the central point, but which seemed to have a very definite outer limit. To me, there was no apparant assymmetry, but my wifer is convinced that it extends away from us a considerable distance greater than its visual size. Interesting. We then spent the next 30 minutes looking at different things. The Orion Nebula (M42?) was much large than I had seen it before, as the sky was very dark and transparent, and the normal bluish nebulosity was quite extensive. For the first time, I was able to easily spot a pastel-pink center area of nebulosity, brighter by not a small amount, than the brighter portions of the blue nebulosity. This was easily seen without the binoculars, but wearing my eye-glasses. Sirius was most spectacular in the binoculars. It seemed like the proverbial electric arc, standing definitely in front of the backround sky, which really did appear to be infinitely far behind Sirius. Most impressive! Dick Pierce