Quote:
Originally Posted by mental4astro
No Moon is a MUST to have a chance of seeing the tail.
The night I vewed Lovejoy the Moon set at 1:30am. Before then while it was up only the coma could be seen. Once the Moon was gone and no trace of glow was visible from the horizon, only then was I able to make out the tail. Very painfully faint, but the detail became noticeable with time.
Also, your best chance to see the tail is to drop the aperture and the magnification. A rich field scope is your best friend here. The tail needs a generous true field of view to be seen. The TFOV of the scope & EP combination I used is 5° - massive really. 25X80 binos could have a chance as you are using both eyes, but the field of view of these is closer to 2.5°. In my 4" f/5 refractor with an ES 30mm 82° eyepiece, I'm getting only 17X magnification. This is one of those situations where a RFT comes into its own. Aperture grunt or high magnification and a narrow TFOV just stands no chance.
|
Alex, were your visual tail obs with a dark sky or in suburbia sir?