|
C/2007 W1 Boattini - Discovery by Andrea Boattini via the Mt. Lemmon
Sky Survey.
This is currently the brightest comet in the sky, at 8th mag and pretty
diffuse. Observers are seeing this with 10x50 and maybe even 7x10 binocs!
If you want to see this, go to a 'dark' place. With the scope, I actually
was overlooking this one and expecting something bright and condensed like
Comet Tuttle (don't know why...but Tuttle was my last comet observation
maybe that's why) First when I came over the region near 30 Eta Crater
with help of detailed finder chart, I could see a couple stars surrounded
by nebulosity. The nebulous comet was superimposed on these stars, and I
thought of waiting some more time till it moves for a better view.
After around 2 hours when I saw the region again, I noticed a 'very'
diffuse patch (with no boundary) which was the comet. This was quite
difficult, more than my expectations. I could not estimate coma diameter
for this unfortunately, but maybe it was 5-7 arc minutes across. Should be
8th magnitude as reports say, and expected to get brighter. Will upload
sketch
sometime.
|
