[Chaos-l] [Fwd: Re: Nice Animated GIF Of Comet Lulin]

[Robert Nielsen]

Sorry,

Jon is right ... a fist out at arm's length.  The only problem with that 
(now that I went out and looked at it last night) is that the comet 
MOVES A LOT ... even during a single night.  I think I read somewhere 
that it is moving roughly 10 full moons against the star field every 
night ... and indeed ... it was a lot closer to Regulus than 5 degrees 
at 11 PM last night.    The way I found it last night (note this won't 
work any more, based on its movement) was to put Saturn in the binocs, 
move Saturn to the lower left part of the view field, there was a star 
in the upper right ... put that star at about 9 o'clock in the binoc 
view field, and the comet was in the center.   But it was faint.   Not 
sure if that was caused by light pollution or high clouds (both seemed 
to be a problem last night), but I did find it.

Of course ... we may be done observing for this week ... clouds ...

Robert

Stewart-Taylor, Jon wrote:
>> [...] a sense of what 5 degrees means [...]
>>     
>
> Hold your closed fist out at arm's length.  That's 5 degrees.  That's
> also the approximate field of view of most binoculars of the 7x35 or
> 10x50 variety, and many finder scopes. Oh, and a bit over one
> outer-Telrad-ring: if you center your guide star (or planet), then move
> it to the outer ring, then move one inner ring, that's 5 degrees.
>
> Especially for things like finding bright comets, i strongly recommend
> using a pair of binoculars first.  You can often just sweep the object
> up, and even if it's not directly visible, you get an idea of what the
> field will look like in the finder.
>
> J.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org] On
> Behalf Of mdlemon at lemons-bend.com
> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 9:12 PM
> To: chaos-l at rtpnet.org
> Subject: Re: [Chaos-l] [Fwd: Re: Nice Animated GIF Of Comet Lulin]
>
>
>
> I went out with the scope to take a look but couldn't find the sucker.  
> Of course, that direction is right between two houses with a blazing  
> orange criminal street star shining in my eyes.
>
> Give a noob a sense of what 5 degrees means in naked distances.
>
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