Since the baseball game was over after the 3rd inning and Mythbusters was a repeat, this made a very welcome diversion. Once I tilted my head to get Perseus in the "easy to recognize" position, the comet stood out like a sore thumb. In my 15x70 bino's it was a fuzzy ball with a definite bright center. Realizing this was worthy of dragging Gert out, I dragged Gert out. At 71x The Coma was very bright & large and surrounded by a dense haze, best guess about 5 seconds across. I kicked it up to 200x at which the coma was an exceptionally bright, almost translucent white and the haze actually seemed to grow to about 10 Sec. I too I saw the extensions Jeremy mentions. Further study will tell if one of his guesses is correct. Donning my super villain cape and turning into "Tasco" the evil Ridiculously High Power Man, I kicked it up to 400x using my shorty Barlow. Again the Coma was very distinct and again the Extensions noted before were obvious. Not foiled by the good views at (insert Deep Bellowing Voice here) "Ridiculously High Power" I went to "Ludicrous Power and added as second Barlow to bring it up to 800x. Well now The evil Tasco started to win, although I did see it, the image finally started to degrade. While going back to Sane Power I heard my neighbors two doors down and invited them for a looksee. Pointing it out in the sky to them first I gave them a look at 71x & 200x. They though it was pretty cool. Their daughter Myla, mentioned she took an astronomy class at GCC about 6 years ago. From her description, it wasn't Dave's class though. A quick look at the moon and we called it quits for the night. I did make about 4 Sketches while I was out. This was certainly a pleasant surprise. Thanks for the kick in the pants. Clear Skies Rick Tejera President, Editor SACnews Saguaro Astronomy Club Phoenix, Arizona www.saguaroastro.org saguaroastro@xxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeremy Perez Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 21:50 To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Comet Holmes tonight I'll second the drop everything recommendation. Be sure to look also for some faint gauzy material outside the hard-edged coma that Brian described. I'm picking up some soft extensions in this faint halo that appear softly at PA 120 degrees, and a bit more distinct extension at PA 210 degrees. Perhaps developing tails? Or just irregular ejected material? Jeremy http://beltofvenus.perezmedia.net On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:57 PM, Brian Skiff wrote: > I second the recommendation to drop everything and go look > at the comet. No, city lights + Full Moon are not a problem. > This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, pals and gals! > In our 16-inch Cassegrainian on Mars Hill, the comet nucleus > is clearly double inside an eccentric almost annular-looking > inner coma. The brighter nucleus is dead-centered in a perfectly > circular, hard-edged outer coma. > It is very easy to see naked-eye, and obvious if you know > the constellation Perseus. It appears completely stellar naked-eye, > and as it was rising tonight was even twinkling like the neighboring > stars. That's how small the nucleus is. I'm making it just a bit > brighter than gamma Persei (V=2.93), and about 0.3 mag brighter than > delta Persei (V=3.01), so call it mag 2.7 or 2.8 (Oct 25.1 UT). > > \Brian > -- > See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and > please > send personal replies to the author, not the list. > -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list. -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.