Smudge in the sky

[jps]

Has anybody gone out to look at the comet? I checked it out this evening with my 8x50 binoculars.

[charlyg]

Umm, not in LA......

[jps]

Go up into the mountains.

[charlyg]

You say that like a sage who is sending a young protege on his quest for knowledge!!

[mgauction]

You say that like a sage who is sending a young protege on his quest for knowledge!!

Ha! Good one, Charly!

[jps]

[johnallg]

Last night when I went home at 2 am I got out the binoculars, as the sky was clear as a bell, and again saw the leftovers of comet Holmes with clear sky. It looked 3D. We saw it Saturday night through high thin clouds when my daughter the astrophysics grad student told us about it. You could see it then but all fuzzy and just a dull glow. When the sky was really clear and dark like last night, the Milky Way was a well lit and defined swatch through the sky. I was really tempted to get out my scope and look at the comet, the Horsehead Nebula (glows with green gasses!), and whatever else I could scare up, like the Pleiades, but it was really cold and I was really tired.

[shinynewtoy]

I didn't know of the comet passing by... so when I was half-asleep on the couch the wife went out for the last smoke of the night without me. She came in all kinds of excited telling me about it... foolish me, I thought she was nuts!

DAMN! Missed it!

[johnallg]

Bob, it is still there, and will be for a little while longer. Look north about 20 degrees down from directly overhead. Cassiopeia is there about 10pm. She is the 5 stars that form the sideways W. Then look ESE not too far and see a very flattened obtuse triangle of three fairly bright stars. The comet is a puff of white (looks like a backlit cotton ball) just off the center star of that triangle. If it is clear, fairly dark, and cloudless, you will see it with the unaided eye. It travels slowly with the rotation of the earth. It orbits between Mars and Jupiter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17P/Holmes#2007_outburst

[edit] From that link, looks like the triangle of stars I talk about is part of Perseus.