Californians: Comet McNaught

**Alan H** · 12th January 07, 09:36 AM

We also can see Comet MacNaught! I wrote to a bunch of clan members, including Gene and Ruth, our local Nor Cal hosts at the MacNaughton tent this past summer. Here's Gene's e-mail to me this morning.

****************

We drove over to the coast (about 15 miles) tonight
> and sure enough we also saw the comet too! However,
> we don't have the photo to prove it like you do. Your
> photo looked almost exactly like what we saw. We saw
> it best about 5:45pm, almost 35 minutes after the
> offical sunset of 5:10pm. It only lasted about 20
> minutes as it sunk into the horizon. Our car
> thermometer registered 46 degrees, but the wind was
> terrific so we felt it was about 36 degrees outside.

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I pointed Gene and Ruth to some of the links about the comet on the web, I don't really have my own pictures...I wish I *DID have an eight inch celestron cassegrain scope with a 35 mm. attachment, but nope.

I'm going to get out by Half Moon Bay today at 5:00 to take a look. If you have someplace handy where you can get an unobstructed view of the horizon just at sunset, then look for the comet in the general vicinity of Venus. Take a pair of binoculars if you can. It should still be pretty bright on Saturday , too but will then start fading until it re-emerges frombehind the sunlater inthe month..

Cheers!

**Freelander Sporrano** · 12th January 07, 09:41 AM

Sound great Have fun and, try for some pictures.Mine were taken with a Canon s3is on a tripod . I haven't got a camera mount for my Meade ETX 70.
I don't think it's possble to mount my camera on it either

**McMurdo** · 12th January 07, 09:45 AM

Good luck with spotting it Alan.

**GMan** · 12th January 07, 10:02 AM

Hope that you had better luck with it than I did Alan. Too much cloud cover, perhaps tonight.

**Alan H** · 12th January 07, 07:33 PM

GOT IT! I should've hauled out my old 35 mm SLR with the 150 mm lens, 'cause it would have done a great job of picking this up.

There were about a dozen folks at the intersection of Highway 92 and Skyline road at 5:10, and sure enough about 5:20..*boom* there it was. Within minutes it was visible to the naked eye and I got a good long look at it for 20 minutes until it just got too flippin' cold and it started descending into the red haze on the horizon after the sunset. You could see the tail without any lenses, and it was plain as the nose on my face with binoculars. Now I wish I'd have gotten out there LAST night when it was 15 degrees higher up in the sky....and had the camera!!

BEAUTIFUL!

BTW, the folks who were there said it was unlikely to be visible tomorrow night, it will be too close to the sun, and will barely be above the horizon after sunset so I *just* caught my opportunity!