Quote:
|
Originally Posted by cometcatcher
2004 was a great year for comets. I observed more bright comets that year than any other. Not too far away from T7 Linear was Q4 Neat. What's the chances of two naked eye comets at the same time? Very difficult tail visually with this comet though.
|
we had seen those two naked eye comets simultaneously when q4 was still circumpolar and t7 was in morning sky in april several times before the evening show (from dark skies).
We drove nearly to Broken Hill/NSW up barrier highway to escape clouds to see the evening show on the 20th/21st may, drove too long and couldnt set up for photography first night - had to settle for multiple binocs and NE views, which were a pretty good consolation
that was the best we had seen q4 that night, as it was totally cloudy the next night - 800 klm round trip.
these werent the only pair of (sometimes barely) ne comets for some lucky earth viewers that year - there was also the strange co-incidence of the northerners having a surprise ne pair in the surprise Comet Bradfield and t7 around the same time as us
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040503.html that was very, very strange!
then myself and a mate saw 2003 K4 LINEAR and 2004 Q2 Machholz on morning 16th dec both ne simultaneously from a dark sky site .
Machholz was pretty good too - funny how about the earliest prediscovery image of machholz found was when it was near/in tail of t7 from the morning 15 may in widefield shots - unfortunately our darksky film shot didnt go deep enough to catch the diffuse 14th mag beastie that time even tho its position is in shot, but maybe could of if there wasnt a stuff up with the kendricks and we could of imaged it higher up
L.
Although I used to get Perihelion with special bulletins. Kind of obsolete now with internet. But I used to like reading David Seargent's little write ups all the same. Always used to love the arrival of perihelion in the mail. 
