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Re: (meteorobs) Hale/Bopp Obser CURMA
Greetings from The Nordic Telescope on La Palma, Canary Islands.
It's been a dire month for me (won't bore you with the catalogue of
disasters), but one of the few highlights has been seeing Hale-Bopp.
I first saw it from home in Oxfordshire on Feb 3.26 where it looked
+2.0 and had a 1.5-degree tail seen through a 12x40 binocular (and
about 0.5 degree tail with the naked eye). That night was an
exceptional +6.8, with high transparency that minimised the
affects of light pollution.
Then at the end of a frustrating night on the NOT Feb. 13/14 around
0645UTC I was able to see it over a bank of clouds. At first H-B was
hard to find because immediately below it was a bank of the cloud and
Altair being dimmed strongly by this cloud, and I didn't pick up
Cygnus, the odd angle of the Northern Cross at this latitude was a
little disorienting. The whole building moves to give azimuthal
motion for the telescopes so when you step outside, it's not
immediately obvious which direction you are looking. Sometimes
he first stars you see are ones not visible from the UK like the sting
of Scorpius. I digress.
At first H-B looked as bright as Altair, but once I got my bearings
it looked about +1.5. It still had an impressive tail of at least a
degree. Last night I managed even fewer NOT observations but gained a
better view of the comet nestled over the caldera in a line from Altair
to Deneb. I made a more-careful estimate at 0650 of mag +1.4, i.e.
slightly dimmer than Deneb. It was a most impressive sight taken in
with the other domes perched on the volcanic landscape below, viewed
as the first rays of the morning crept over the rocky prominences.
Hope to take a longer look later this morning if I time my CCD
exposures carefully.
Malcolm
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