***Off Topic***
I feel pretty good right now. I just got to see Comet NEAT, about 10 degrees or so from the brightest star Sirius (to the south of Sirius as Sirius is in the southwestern skies this time of year, or at about the position 0910 on the face of a clock). The comet is extremely faint, though the astronomers say it's at magnitude 2.5, which should be easily visible to the naked eye. I made it to be around magnitude 6 or so, probably because of my highly light polluted suburban environment. (The higher the number of magnitude, the dimmer the object will appear to be. Most people can make out stars down to magnitude 4.5 or so, and a few exceptional people can see down to about magnitude 6.)
Anyway, I saw it in binoculars and in my telescopes. Sort of a faint waxy white, with a bright point of light in the middle of the waxy color, which resembles nothing more than a smudge. The comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere for the next few weeks, climbing ever higher in the sky each night (visible just after dusk, when dark twilight has set in). But, unfortunately its magnitude is dimming each night. My neighbor (a much younger woman) claimed to be barely able to see the comet with her naked eye tonight. But most folks, especially folks older than 40 who have lost some of their night vision will need either binoculars or a telescope to view the comet.
KJC
PS - NEAT stands for Near Earth Asteroid Tracking, which is the team of astronomers that discovered this comet while searching for asteroids that are near our planet and may one day pose a collision hazard. |
