Thanks to everyone for the feedback. It's nice to know that your time isn't being wasted
My appologies to anyone looking for Tuesdays times and chart. I was unable to get onto the net.
Glad that all of you, and your families, have had a chance to see it. It really is worth seeing.
Unfortunatelly, it's starting to fade, but it will still be visible naked eye for atleast another week, it just won't be as spectacular as it has been.
Another problem is our Moon, it will be getting a lot brighter and setting later, lighting up the sky and blowing out the faint tail. At full Moon it may be difficult to see the comet at the rate it's fading.
POL + Stuster, there are a few groups campaigning against light pollution. Not just Astronomers but also greenie groups, because excessive light hours can affect native flora and fauna. There's also the theory that there is less crime in area's where street lights are not on all night! One argument to support this is that people wandering around outside a house at night with torches look very suspect! Makes sense. I certainly haven't seen any decrease in crime since lights went all-night. Seems to be just as many car crashes too. I wonder how much carbon pollution is created while making all the light pollution?
Tony, Glad you got to see it. I'm jealous you got to see Ikeya-Seki in '65. I've seen lots of photo's of it (including a book with a colour one from Kings Park, wow Perth looked
different then!), but I was -10 at the time!
I can remember when the street lights used to turn off late. I'm pretty sure they turned off earlier than that here in Rocko, maybe midnight? Used to be a real treat when my brother and I snuck out of the house in the early morning to look at Halley's in '86 with mates and it was pitch-black outside! You are right about the first experience thing. For me it was Halleys at age 11, even though it was a very boring comet(this visit atleast), my memories of it(and the late nights out) are vivid. Just thinking about it brings back the music I used to listen to at the time!
jupiter, I went Marroning on opening night (the 12th+13th - best trip in years) and enjoyed the great dark skies, but the comet was still in the northern hemisphere then, bummer huh? I wish the season had started a week later
Having said that, I get pretty good dark sky here in Rocko, nuthin but black out over the Indian Ocean from South thru to about NorthWest when the lights of Garden Island start to interfere.
Cheers for the pic's
Airgead and
mobrien, They're great. I still prefer to shoot film and need to get my negs scanned, but I had a go with my mum's very old Canon powershot on Sat. night. Didn't have the guts to post the photo tho because it's pretty crap. Here goes anyway:
The photo is actually a combination of four. The individual images were very very noisy(see next pic below) as they were shot at iso400 to capture the faint extremeties of the tail, instead of the usual iso50 which is great for day shots. (a 8x speed increase) The camera is limited to 15sec exposures. If I could go longer, I'd leave it set to a nice clean iso50.
The four images are aligned on the head of the comet, and any noise in the image starts to get cancelled out, detail comes thru and contrast increases. You may have noticed the blurry fence in the foreground, this is due to alignment of the moving comet/stars and unmoving fence in 4 photo's! Compare with fence in photo below. Also note that the horizon has been blured.
I seem to have caught just as much tail as the pro guys(see Gordon Garradd's and Rob McNaught's photo's), but I just seriously lack all the resolution of the pro digital's
One of the individual noisy iso400 shots(top), you can see the difference!
iso50 on bottom, with less tail(earlier shot tho)
EDIT: speelig, images
