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RE: (meteorobs) West, eh?
>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
I forgot about Swift-Tuttle, and it also just dawned on me that
Brorsen-Metcalf was also an easy naked-eye object in the eastern sky during
1989.
Concerning the statistic of a naked-eye comet every three years, that was
primarily based on an analysis of comet records going back over 2000 years.
Obviously, prior to nearly 400 years ago, no telescopes were used, so all
reported comets were naked eye objects.
The overall influx of comets is believed to basically stay the same from
decade to decade. We just have the advantage of sky surveys and very
patient amateur astronomers scanning the skies and picking up a lot of
comets that would have been missed during the pre-telescopic era. Most
astronomers seem to agree that the faintest magnitude for a comet to have
been accidentally discovered with the naked eye was probably about 5.5 (a
few say 5), and even then they would have had to have been looking at the
right place at the right time. Today, we usually have time to plan ahead.
We have an excellent chance to visually see comets of magnitude 5.5, 6, and
even 6.5 because we know exactly where to look (Terry Lovejoy saw Hale-Bopp
with the naked-eye at magnitude 6.7 during May 1996); thus, we have the
potential to see a lot more comets with the naked eye than people of
ancient and medieval times.
Gary