Author:
Boyd Percy
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Date Posted: 23:26:14 03/14/13 Thu
>I just got in from an attempt to pick Comet Pan-STARRS
>out of the twilight. I think I got a very faint
>glimpse of it in thr 7x35 bird-watching binoculars I
>usually keep in the car. It was very hazy and hard to
>pick out, but the fuzzy patch seemed to be oriented in
>the right direction; it was hard to tell since it was
>hazy off in that direction. Either way, it's nothing
>like the "Great Comets" I remember, Arend-Roland in
>1958 and Ikeya-Seki in 1965. Those two -- wow, you
>didn't need binoculars for them, you needed a lawn
>chair. The latter was visible across twenty degrees of
>sky, at least in my memory. There just have not been
>comets like those two since then.
>
>Twenty years ago amateur astronomy was my main
>passion. I spent many nights out under a clear night
>sky with telescopes I'd built myself, and I got pretty
>familiar with the dark dome overhead. I still like to
>get out and check things out once in a while, but all
>of the friends that helped make my observing so
>fulfilling have dropped out, moved away, or in some
>cases passed on. My quick look for Pan-STARRS tonight
>was out at the best observing site in the area, a
>state-designated dark sky preserve that I helped to
>initiate -- yet there wasn't a soul around.
>
>I remember spending any number of evenings with a
>telescope, looking for some faint fuzzy object in the
>sky. I got pretty good at it -- I hold Herschel Club
>certificate #98, which hangs on the wall by my
>shoulder. That probably means nothing to most readers
>here, so let's just say that it involved a lot of
>patience, perseverance and persistence over a period
>of a couple years. It also involved lot of time with
>my eye up to the eyepiece, often of the 13-inch "light
>bucket" I sold to finance my Grand Canyon trip,
>hopping from one faint star pattern to another to find
>the object I was searching for.
>
>Part of the reason my interest in amateur astronomy
>faded was that computers came on the scene. All that
>work I did with star charts and finder scopes to hunt
>down one of those faint fuzzy objects -- well, it
>seems to me I did it honestly. Today, it's no great
>trick to punch some numbers into a keypad and watch
>the telescope swivel to the target by itself. Somehow,
>it doesn't have the same sense of accomplishment to
>me. In fact, it seems like cheating.
>
>But that's neither here nor there. I had some good
>times back then, and I can at least enjoy remembering
>them. My vision isn't what it was back then, and I
>have to admit that I've moved on from those days, too.
>
>By the way, there's another comet due this fall --
>roughly October and November. I don't remember the
>details but they're easily looked up. I'll probably go
>out and try to hunt it up, even though it hardly seems
>likely that it will be one of those sky-filling "Great
>Comets" I remember from my youth.
In the first chapter of "Rocinante", Mark mentions the comet Ikeya-Seki that had passed by six years previously and Jackie replies that she got up early in the morning to view it and how spectacular it was. And of course, they took Mark's home-made telescope with them on their trip.
Wes, did you ever go to the Texas Star Party or Stellafane or do stargazing from the Southern Hemisphere like Mark?
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