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RE: (meteorobs) West, eh?



On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, THOMAS T WOJACK wrote:

> I read somewhere that on average, a comet reaches naked-eye visiblity 
> every 3 years .  Is this really true?
> 
> Jonathan(NTZT04A@prodigy.com)
> http://pages.prodigy.com/Astro/homepage.htm
> 

Seems like it would be more often, depending on if you consider naked-eye 
visibility to be for the few or the many.

I saw Halley naked-eye in 1985-86; took a break from observing and missed
Austin and Levy in 1990; saw Swift-Tuttle naked-eye in 1992; DeVico in
1995; Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, and Tabur in 1996 (wow)! 

Anyway, for my money Hyakutake still beats Hale-Bopp for impressiveness 
at a dark site, but the two are completely different in appearance.

--
Wes Stone <wstone@lclarkdot edu>  Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR
                  Comet Hale-Bopp Hotlist/Updates:
             http://www.lclarkdot edu/~wstone/stuff/hb.html


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