Comet McNaught From New Stereo Satellite (APOD 17 Jan 2007)

[orin stepanek]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070117.html
The context says that the comet is so bright that you can see it during the day by blocking the sun out with your hand. I'M going to try it. The picture from Stereo is awesome. The comet must have been a fairly close encounter with Stereo. I wish is was in color.
Orin

[Pete]

It's cloudy in Toronto where I am Be careful and let us know if you can see it!

[ta152h0]

someday the earth is going to fly thru the tail of this beast and I am watching

[iamlucky13]

someday the earth is going to fly thru the tail of this beast and I am watching

Unfortunately, nope. I don't remember where at the moment, I found an animation of it's trajectory. It is inclined about 70 degrees to the ecliptic plane, and it crosses from above to below the plane of earth's orbit less than a quarter of the earth's radius from the sun. Mercury might cross it, but we won't get to enjoy any kind of meteor show from this beast.

I tried to view it in the daylight on Friday and Saturday, when I first heard reports that other people had seen it. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of haze around the sun from the icy air, so the sky was really bright. But, I did see it at sunset on Thursday. Very nice.

Most recommendations are to use the edge of a building to block the sun. It's a more definite and controllable boundary.

[orin stepanek]

I looked several times and had no luck so far. The sky around the sun is very bright. Must be a lot of moisture in the air. I hope to try again about an hour before sun goes down; but sky is getting pretty cloudy so my chances are going to be slim.
Orin

[BMAONE23]

if you have a piece of welders glass, that might work.

This is one of the animations I've seen but I am still looking for the other good one.

http://www.space.com/php/video/player.p ... McNaught06

[BMAONE23]

Here is another site showing the orbit
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?name=c/2006+P1

[BMAONE23]

OK, Here is the one I was looking for
http://www.shadowandsubstance.com/

[iamlucky13]

Here is another site showing the orbit
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?name=c/2006+P1

Yeah, that's the one I was talking about. It lets you zoom in and out, rotate the view around in two axis, and control the date. Really nifty.

I don't know how to read all the data from the table below, but it says the inclination is 77.8 degrees (almost perpendicular to the earth's orbit), perihelion is 0.17 AU (~15 million miles), and the aphelion is 5681 AU (~500 billion miles).

I thought there was some way to infer from the data on it where the comet crosses the ecliptic plane, but I'm not sure. You can tell from the animation that it occurs pretty close to perihelion.

[orin stepanek]

It turned out to be too cloudy to view the comet. I will look again in the morning. Hopefully It'll show up before it gets too dim. I liked the animations BMAONE23 sent in really neat.
Orin

[orin stepanek]

I never did get to see it because of the haze so I did the next best thing. I found some pictures on the net.
http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_ ... _page7.htm
I did get to see a comet back in the 90's. We got on the roof at work one night to view it. I'm not sure but I believe it was Hale Bopp.
Orin

[ta152h0]

I saw Hale-Bopp and was fortunate enough to see an outburst live, it was about 1030 at night hwere on the west coast. the bloomin' thing brightened considerably in my binoculars. At the time i didn't have access to the interned. Most likely got hit by something, maybe a russian rocket entering it's atmosphere

[orin stepanek]

http://www.aerith.net/index.html
this site is of interest if you like comets.
Orin