Comets and the New Year

2008 ended on a great note for me. Having seen Comet Lulin from Fort Myers this morning (from under a street light no less!), I can officially say that it is an urban comet. While it's not going to be anywhere near as impressive as Comet Holmes of 2007, any comet visible from the city counts as a successful comet. I hate getting out of bed early, but if anything can do it it's an easy comet! Nothing starts your day off better (except maybe a good cup of coffee) than seeing a beautiful snowglobe in the sky before work. It's going to be part of my morning routine for a while.

Two of the great memories of my youth are the Great Comets Hyakatake and Hale-Bopp. My dad drove me out into the country for a better look after my (highly annoying, I'm sure!) nagging. Following star charts from local newspapers and Sky and Telescope, I found these comets in the night sky with my trusty 7x35mm Tasco binoculars. Even from the city, I would wake up in the middle of the night to go outside and see them. It cemented my already present interest in astronomy, and was a driving influence in my scope purchase years later. If another comet like those came our way, I wanted to be ready. Of course things snowballed from there... Funny now how comets (for sane people, anyway) are now objects of fascination and delight rather than terror.

One of my New Year's Astronomy Resolutions is to add more comets to my observing diet. There are usually a couple of comets visible at any given time from a dark site with a 6" or larger scope, as there are right now. Just take a look at some of the comet observing sites on this page. I enjoy observing comets immensely, but my dark sky observing time is at a premium, and my other 2009 resolution is to finish the Herschel 400 (only 132 targets left!). Nevertheless, I'm going to make an effort to check visible comets and print off a chart or two before my observing treks.

I find with observing telescopic comets that you can treat them like deep sky objects, except they move from night to night. The same skills you develop as a visual deep sky observer like star-hopping, averted vision, and wearing your pirate eye-patch, come in handy when looking for comets. It's a great feeling to finally track down one of these. I've averaged about three comets per year since getting my first scope, but I'd like to up that number considerably.

I've been researching comet observing methods, strategies, and terminology at this excellent site, Night Sky Hunter. It explains a lot of the techniques specific to watching comets, in particular the "Degree of Condensation" classification system and magnitude estimation (something I'm not good at but would like to be). Useful stuff like that I print out and stick in plastic page protectors in my observing binders. It's a site well worth checking out. I think I'm going to make the jump from novice comet watcher to moderately advanced comet watcher. Watch this space for more updates!

Anyway, best wishes and God bless in 2009. I'm not going to stay up too late tonight - I need to get my early morning comet fix tomorrow!