Quote:
Originally Posted by ving
wahh! too far south  |
Go North, young man!!
OK, I'm back at my desk after a weekend in Darwin, yes, latitude 12 deg S!
17P/Holmes cannot hide below the horizon from there!
Well, it did its best to hide behind the cloud. Build-up time is underway in the NT. Saturday evening - clouded out. But Sunday evening - promising....
Full moon, a thin haze and low cloud to the horizon make it a struggle. Add Darwin's skyglow and I really was struggling to understand the sky. My planisphere (set for 35 deg S) is a bit of a guide. Started looking around 10:30pm local time, up at Lee Point, north of the city. Plenty of Moonlight behind hazy cloud (the Moon rose very red in colour and progressed through yellow over 90 min). Cannot pick out stars below the Moon. Where's Capella? Agonise for a while.
It finally clears above the Moon and I pick out Pegasus and Andromeda. I have my 12x60s with me. Can just pick out the smudge of M31, but not good enough to show those who came with me to see the comet. OK, I entertain them with views of the Moon, the belt of Orion, a faint M42 and Aldalbaran. Give up and go back to the city after I still cannot make out any stars below and to the north of the Moon - still hazy, but Capella should be visible??
Packing to leave on the 1:30am (
) flight. I leave the binoculars outside in the heat and humidity. (I learnt not to carry binoculars from air-conditioned room into outside heat/humidity and expect to use them immediately
).
Back out at midnight, look NNE down the street, clouds have cleared, and between the trees, there it is!
17P/Holmes just jumps out and grabs you! It's up around some 20 deg in elevation and is a bright distinctive orange fuzzball. I was seeing it with bright orange (sodium?) street lights framing the view, yet it was very distinctive. I put the 12x60s on the job and they didn't give me much more information, in fact I had to deal with substantial internal reflections/flaring from the street lights in the view.
I only had about 10 min to look and to show everyone else. I was able to locate Capella lower in the sky, and though I'm not much good at estimating magnitudes, especially for different coloured objects, I reckoned there wasn't much difference.
However it was the colour that struck me - very orange. I did wonder whether it was the effect of some low haze that had made the Moon so red before, but 17P/Holmes was at a reasonable elevation now and Capella, which was lower, was white.
So there it is! Most exciting. I will try from Melbourne, but it will be a challenge. Some 2-3 deg elevation around 2:30am (daylight saving time? - I've lost track, having been in NT, Qld and Vic in a period of 12 hrs!)
Thanks for all the reports and photos - this could be good fun for a while yet.
Eric
