Rating the whole Comet McNaught experience.

[dcnicholls]

Top 5? Interesting challange... The order is a bit arbitrary:

1. Overhead IBC4 aurora (corona), May 1970, Saskatchewan
2. Comet Ikeya-Seki in the Canberra pre-dawn sky in October 1965
3. Total eclipse of the Sun, Gippsland, 1976
4. Comet McNaught
5. The night sky, early morning, January 1988, seen from Perisher

And there are others competing, like the Venus transit, my first view of the rings of Saturn, DY Crucis through a 12" GSO, my first view of NGC3532 through a small telescope, Omega Cen through Peter Bobroff's 20"...

To paraphrase an old SBS slogan: "The Universe is an amazing place"

DN

[fringe_dweller]

I have seen a lot of comparisons with hyakutake now, and I guess it is like comparing 'apples with oranges' a bit
hyakutake had several things going for it that were missing with this current beauty
1/ as mentioned, it was a much easier target in that you didnt have to deal with horizon cloud/smoke/haze/twilight and it was up in the midnight sky overhead and you could take your sweet time enjoying it - for hours on end, in total darkness
2/ even tho it was only really good/maximum spectacular, for us at this latitude for a very short time, really if you think about it, so was this one
3/ the sky conditions we had for hyakutake, for us here in adelaide, were ridiculously good/maximum possible, and stress free, at the time - so that I would have to factor in, at a personal experience level.
4/ hyakutake had some interesting aspects that I havent got from this one
they would be
a/ the bright naked eye 2 degree wide outer coma was very beautiful, and i found the head/coma to be much more interesting than to p1 (looking past its striking bright intensity for a moment, but Hyakutake was at 0, not too shabby) - telescopically with a superb 13" dob, seeing and transparency was prolly close to 10 out od 10? for the two nights we spent at dark sites. we were under the impression were actually resolving the true nucleus!!!! (we spent a great deal of time observing nucleus)
that is unheard of, and supposedly impossible!
b/ prolly due to its extreme proximity to earth at the time, we got the distinct impression of 3-D ness in the naked eye view, much like when you see a spectacular deep and long lunar eclipse, when the subdued moon looks eerily 3D! I never got this from this one
c/ we were like checking out B2 and then driving around the sky checking out other stuff, and then its oh yeah lets have another look at the giant comet in the sky, it was some of the best sessions ever.
d/ it had a 100d tail with binocs, and about 80d naked eye - technically it had a longer (distinctiveand observable) tail for me.
d/ to observe a 'gas comet' so up close and personal like that is pretty rare, in fact only once in 1000-4000 years is this sort of observation possible
(EDIT: earth viewer favouring tail phase angle as well, and moon free, at its best,i am refering to here) I am not dissing p1, just bringing some balance to the story

[fringe_dweller]

Slice, i hope you werent part of that comp in the south were the king tide swamped all the vehicles!! yikes!
you had a very similar view that night. to what we had by the sounds of it - freaky eh!

[slice of heaven]

Originally Posted by fringe_dweller

Slice, i hope you werent part of that comp in the south were the king tide swamped all the vehicles!! yikes!

Yep, we were expecting the worst, so we claimed a patch of high ground to camp. Though we were expecting some camps elsewhere to get swamped we didn't expect the carnage to be so widespread and cause the loss and damage to hundreds of thousands of $$$ to vehicles and gear that it did.
There were some soggy sights the next morning.

you had a very similar view that night. to what we had by the sounds of it - freaky eh!

It certainly was

[fringe_dweller]

hehe - i knew you wouldnt be caught out slice, - but i couldnt help thinking while watching the footage, what kind of self respecting fisherman doesnt know his tides/local conditions inside out!!

[firstlight (Tony)]

There isn't really an option for how I feel about this comet. I saw Ikea-Seki as a 4 yo, not knowing what it was and thinking it was a rocket. 2 revelations in the next 20 years were (1) It was a comet not a rocket, and (2) If it was a comet int must have been FANTASTIC!!. I have been waiting since then to witness another like it. Comet Hyakutake was the highlight with the ion tail rising like a search beam above the horizon, 25+ tail as it saild by in the night... breathtaking.

As someone once said that any eclipse less than a total is like a kiss from your sister, the total is the real deal. I have to agree. Ceduna 2002 is in my top 5. Venus Transit is there as well, but giving the comets a run for the money is the Leonid storm 2001.

Tony

[Zubenel (Wes)]

NIce use of emoteecons Ron

But seriously. How could you not rate it higher than ......what??????
Absolutely fantasmigorical!!!

Cheers Zub.