Hehe, there are already hundreds (maybe thousands?) of images of this comet peppered all over the internet from ppl with ultra-expensive equipment......this is the most imaged comet in history!

So I think my ambition is just to be able to see it with my own eyes.
Just imagine, the actual photons from the comet, travelling at the speed of light, entering my eye as I look at it realtime....

Eithanius, I think this is one you must see for yourself. One day you'll be telling your grandchildren you actually saw a comet breaking up!

Hey MR.LKM..Our place what time the comet??? Able to see with the naked eye or not? Clear skies here in Kluang. Moon so bright,,,,,,

This post has been edited by julchin_09: May 12 2006, 10:38 PM

at the 6th magnitude.....? it's gonna be extremely hard for the naked eye....

Sorry im a newbie in this. Care to describe in simpler terms for me? To begin with is face East,WeSt,North or South?

thanks

Jeezzz, this is difficult.....

it's coming up from north east.... 4 a.m. at altitude 46 degrees as it progresses to 55+ degrees northward around 6 a.m..... beyond that, it's in the wrath of the Sun....

this is the best description i can give.... but at magnitude 6.24*, it gonna be difficult to spot the comet unaided. Visibility comparison, Uranus (magnitude 5.5) is viewable with a naked under favourable conditions.....

good luck....

*Magnitude scale = object brightness diminishes with increasing numbers....

EDITED: according to SNP, there are now 5 separate components of the comet registered....

This post has been edited by Eithanius: May 12 2006, 11:23 PM

argh...4am? wah.....weLL Worst comes to worst, I'll get the pics online since its going to be a toughie seeing it unaided.... Thanks for the explanation though.

I've been up all night hoping for a glimpse of the comet.....at midnight, the Moon and Jupiter were easily visible but nothing else. Things just went downhill from then. Then just now at 6.45 am, Venus and Vega peeked through the clouds with the sky already lightening.......aaaarggggggghhhhh! Another futile night.

Well, there's still hope over the next few nights.......

It seems impossible to get into the jpl.nasa site now for the latest high accuracy ephemerides -I only managed to generate one set for fragment C last night which I manually dumped into SNP. Have to try to get the whole set of 60 fragments today.

Now on playback, I know why I missed seeing this fragment last weekend - I was keeping a close watch on the Ring Nebula until 6.00 am but the comet only flew by it at 11.00 am! So bl**dy close, but a miss is as good as a mile!

This post has been edited by March05: May 13 2006, 07:36 AM

Bro Eithanius has already answered you.

March05, I am even worse than you. I have a clear sky here but you know? I am nearly late for school today. I woke up at 4.28AM and decided to sleep back as the alarm was set on 5.15AM. Somehow, I slept until 6.45AM... I will try my luck these few nights again until I observe it with my eyes!

How come you got school today? I thought everybody was given a long weekend off specially to view the comet....

The sky looks a bit more favourable now than last night, it rained in the morning and doesn't look like it will rain again later..... Mr.LKM, this will be OUR night!

julchin_09, just get up at 3.00 am, look roughly North East, halfway between the horizon and right overhead. If you just look wildly all over this quadrant, (not Eithanius's Delta Quadrant please) chances are some of the photons from the comet will enter your eye even though you may not recognise it.....

Mr.LKM studying in private Chinese School here. Sat got school.

Thanks for the advicce March. I will check and see for any anomalies tonight if the weather permits. Its raining biscuits and donuts here the whole day. How long will this event carry on? Optimum date for viewing this?

Thanks

It's quite sad that the sky is still clearing. I think it needs at least 3 hours to do it as the wind speed is quite slow now.

Kluang cloudy now. I guess I aint even seeing stars....

This post has been edited by julchin_09: May 14 2006, 03:23 AM

what....? those momentary white spots....?

White spots are caused by laser beams from your friends in Proxima Centauri, lah. The comet, on the other hand, leaves sparkling floaters in your eyes. That's what I've got after straining my right eye through the telescope eyepiece for hours this morning.

This morning around 3.30 am, the sky around Cygnus was moderately clear for about 30 minutes. A quick scan with the binos showed the stars down to 5th magnitude, but still no comets.
So out came the telescope. It was a rush job to get the telescope tracking accurately using Deneb and Geinah cygni. When I slewed the telescope to 73P/SW3 - fragment C, (or rather where it should be, based on the epheremis from JPL/NASA) I barely had a few seconds to catch a glimpse of a small faint and fuzzy patch before the whole view was wiped out by clouds. I waited in vain for the skies to clear so that I could confirm I had indeed caught my first view of the comet.

It looks like all the effort has go to waste again. Even the Moon, Jupiter, Vega, Arcturus all disappeared behind the clouds by 4.30 am......brave Venus rose and made a few seconds appearance at about 5.30 am before the clouds got it too.

isn't your telescope computer driven.....?

Oh man. That's bad but better than me though. The thich clouds was reflecting the light from the road light... By the way, where to get the epheremis?

Yup, but it need precise alignment to make sure that the tracking is accurate.

[Yes, it is. As M. LKM says, you still need to do precise alignment. That's why I decided to select Dened and Geinah as secondary alignment stars to be as accurate as possible. Fragment B, based on JPL/NASA's data generated on 13th May, should have been very,very near Geinah at that time this morning. Fragment C, however, seems to be nearly identical to 73P/SW3 (1995)'s original path.

Does it show that in your SNP? I confirmed it on my version 4......

I think I have posted this before?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sst...l&search=Search

Choose the fragment you want, then look for the little `generate high accuracy ephemeris' box, click on it, and it will take you to another menu to confirm the generation of the ephemeris. Be careful, this NASA site keeps crashing my Firefox - some javascipt bug problem......

Use the data and manually input it into the Solar System/Comets' menu on your Autostar handbox as new comets (choose add).

I have exactly the same data manually dumped into SNP. It is interesting to note that the realtime generation of the R.A. and Dec. positions of the fragments differs between SNP and Autostar by a few arc seconds up to almost an arc minute! I was running the telescope and SNP side by side this morning and I noticed this difference immediately.

check it out....

Pic 1 is what you've described on 73P and fragment C, almost share the same orbit.....

Pic 2 is taken from the local horizon, northeast at 5am tmrw from the time of this post....

btw, is your SNP location view set to where you're from....?


Attached thumbnail(s)

live pics from the internet?