Stan’s Obligatory Blog

1/14/2007

It’s not often I get to do astronomy during the daytime

Filed under: — stan @ 11:31 pm

Today I got notice from my friend Dave that Comet McNaught is bright enough to see during the daytime. I’d heard about this comet, but it was too low during the evening to see it over the houses across the street. But the report said that it was now bright enough to see during the day. So I immediately went out to look.

I stood in the shadow of the roof of my house, but I couldn’t see it. So I got my binoculars. Then I found it. It was impressive. It was as good as the nighttime comets I’ve seen from here, since the light pollution here in Los Angeles usually makes it hard to see the comet’s tail. But this one was bright. I could see the head, and a little bit of the tail. I tried to find it with my telescope, but without stars to guide me, I couldn’t find it. Still, I was able to get a photo of it. I used my Canon S2 with about a 10x zoom. You can see the comet as a little fuzzy point in the photo. The tail doesn’t show up in the picture, but it’s still impressive that it’s visible at all.

Since I’m not a night person, it’s perhaps a bit unfortunate that I have astronomy as a hobby. So it’s nice when I get a chance to do it during the day.

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