After a few cloudy evenings (following a long run of clear evenings I didn't properly take advantage of), and seeing some of the excellent PANSTARRS / Lemmon combination photos in the Photo Gallery, it was time to have a go this evening in Melbourne. Time to grab the beastie and see if I could catch PANSTARRS, which I hadn't yet had a look at.
I'm lucky with a pretty low southwestern horizon -I can see down to about 8 deg. And with Formalhaut as a guide, it popped out fo the twilight in the binoculars about 30 minutes after sunset, a classic cometary 'hairy star'. The view in both the little scope and the 16" was great, and in the 16" there was a lovely view over the next 20 minutes of a bright starlike nucleus and a short 1/4 - 1/2 deg tail (still in decent twilight). Two distinct jets/concentrations coming out of the nucleus, one off to the side and one fairly straight back, and the tail swept up and back from the coma. Best comet view in quite a few years for me!
I picked up Lemmon about an hour after sunset, well up in the south/southwest. Much bigger, round coma, but a fainter nucleus, and a faint indistinct tail that promised much if the sky was darker.
PANSTARRS was also visible to the naked eye about 45 mins after sunset - with trees as a marker and knowing just where it was, I could hold it with direct vision in the twilight as a little stellar point. It's probably easier now, but it is below my horizon!
So a first for me - two bright comets with distinct tails in the same sky, both very different but both intriguing.
And to top it off, a quick glance at Jupiter showed a satellite's crisp shadow transit starting with a bite out of Jupiter's eastern limb and excellent belt detail in surprisingly good seeing for a windy night (it is Io). The Solar System's a busy place tonight!
If you've not seen comets before, then the next week or so is an excellent chance, whether it's with the naked eye, binoculars or telescope
