We're up in the cold north visiting our families for the holidays. My wife's parents' farm in eastern Ohio gets some pretty good night skies. I braved the chilly temperatures last night to find Comet Machholz in the sky near the feet of Orion. It was just a fuzzy ball in my binoculars, no tail or anything visible. Still, it's fun to find these somewhat-rare sights.
This comet was discovered by an "amateur" who now has 10 comets to his name.
Here's his story about finding this one. Spaceweather.com has a
sky map. There are currently some
photos on a NASA site. Supposedly the viewing will get better in January, so I might try to photograph it then.
Update 2005-01-03: Back in South Carolina now and we finally got a clear moonless sky. The stars were very bright tonight and I was able to spot the comet fuzzball with the naked eye. I also tried it through binoculars and even my childhood telescope, but it just made it a bigger fuzzball; I couldn't make out any of the tail.
Updated SpaceWeather.com map and a
good photo from an observatory.
I was inspired by this blog entry to go out and take my own photos of Comet Machholz. We've been fortunate to have some clear skies the past couple nights. The guy in the article mounted his digital SLR on a telescope that was tracking the stars to pre
Tracked: Jan 10, 18:28