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(meteorobs) Hale Bopp
Hi all
I have just got up after a short nap taken after I arrived home from a group
session to search for a mysterious spaceship reported to be following behind
comet Hale-Bopp. We had a couple of C14's trained on it, but we saw no
spaceships. What we did see though were a very impressive bow wave, and two
fantastic tails.
We had a very dark sky at our site near Mojave, with the worst light
popllution threatening Hale Bopp coming from the Zodiacal light which
covered a large area of the western sky. It took over an hour after
sunset for the last vestiges of sunlight to disappear, and then HB was
fantastic. The two tails shone brightly from the coma and trailed back
towards Cassioppeia with a ghostly transparency when viewed through my 15 x
80 binos. It was difficult, with the binoculars, to judge the length of
the tails because each more than filled the FOV and it became impossible to
discern the boundaries of the tails. It was easier to see the limits of
the tail with the naked eye. The dust tail extended back almost to alpha
Cas and fanning out to delta Cas on one side, and an equal distance the
other side. I did not see, nor did anybody else comment on, a split in
that tail. The ion tail was even more fantastic. It had taken on a
delicate, transparent, veil like appearance and could be seen beyond epsilon
Cas. The inner edge just brushed to the outside of the W and it appeared
over five degrees wide ( \5 \w ). I estimated the dust trail to be about
25 degrees long, and the ion tail to be over 30 degrees. Through the
telescopes the shock wave ahead of the coma looked very powerful.
Watching meteors was not the purpose of our session, but a lot of sectacular
ones were seen. We had a lot of newbies present and there many howls of
delight when a bright one shot across the sky in the early evening. After
HB had set, I sat down to get something to eat and observed two magnitude 2's
travelling from the area of M81 towards Draco. And then three, between mag
1 and mag-1, travelling from M81 toward where HB had just set. I was just
speculating to myself that these may be some of the spirits that had been
set free from their human bodies and were on their jouney to the spaceship
when a really bright mag -4, or so, shot from over my head and down almost
to the western horizon. I then joined a group at a C14 who were exploring
the NGC galaxies in Virgo. A little after midnight the moon had risen and
we were soon off to sleep. But a lot had been packed into those few hours of
total darkness.
We will be going out to the same site next week end. If anybody would like
to join us they are most welcome to do so. For further information contact
me at astron@earthlinkdot net.
Ron