The Hunt For Neowise

Day 276: I'm down in a valley, a narrow valley. To the northeast of me, I have a window of horizon perhaps 15 degrees in width, and most of that dominated by a 14,410' Mountain. To the north, a 2500-3000' ridge of "hills" begins its immediate and abrupt rise from the valley floor less than a quarter mile from my living room window. To the west, my window of sky is even narrower, blocked by trees but for a notch where a two-lane road cuts through. To put it another way, if an astronomical event occurs, if it's not almost directly overhead, I have very little hope of seeing it. Enter Comet Neowise.

Now I have to say that I've seen one spectacular comet in my lifetime and a few minor ones. Comet West hung directly over Mount Rainier in February 1976. From my southwest Washington home where no light pollution interfered, its tail spanned more than a hand's-width of the pre-dawn sky. After I moved here, Hale-Bopp and Lovejoy made their appearances in 1997 and 2011 respectively, Hale-Bopp presenting directly above those aforementioned "hills" and showing a nice tail. I was able to view it from the comfort of my living room either with my naked eye or through binoculars, although I could easily have covered it with a thumb held at arm's length. Lovejoy was a disappointment, a mere blurry green dot even through my telescope. My sighting of Neowise last night falls somewhere between those of Hale-Bopp and Lovejoy.

After consulting multiple websites, star charts and conferring with astronomer friends who have their own observatory, I thought I might have a decent window for evening viewing if I drove out to Eatonville to a point overlooking the city toward the north. It was 10:15 before the first stars began to appear, and by then, a thin layer of cloud had formed along the horizon, dense enough that aircraft lights winked in and out of existence as they passed through the thicker portions. Was I going to miss Neowise because of it? Wait...as I turned my head, scanning the sky where I thought it was supposed to be, my eyes registered a smudge of light slightly higher in the sky than I had expected. By averting my eyes slightly in the manner one does if one is trying to count the number of stars visible in the Perseids, I could see a tiny bright dot trailing a smear. If I tried to look directly at it, it disappeared. I had not brought binoculars and don't think they would have been much help. I know I could never have found it without a better aiming device on my telescope. As for the camera, forget it. My camera doesn't like night photography even at the best of times, and it would have taken much longer than the 15 seconds it allows me for an extended exposure to have recorded the faint, nearly invisible flyspeck of Neowise. But I saw it, and that's what counts. Hopefully, there will be better viewing later in the month.

Sky Watch

Day 92: You might think that astronomy was an odd hobby for someone in the Pacific Northwest to want to take up, but with the approach of Comet Lovejoy, my desire for a good telescope was renewed. However, for the last two weeks, I've found myself wishing for a giant fan to blow the clouds away, and I was beginning to fear that any occasion for viewing the comet would be doomed by overcast conditions. I was watching the weather report closely, but NOAA seemed to have a very different definition for "partly cloudy" than what was happening in my sky. My fears were turning to despair until yesterday when I finally saw blue. However, by late afternoon, clouds had reappeared.

After walking nine miles, I ate dinner and treated myself to a hot bath and a cup of decaffeinated tea. What happened next was as certain as death and taxes: I sat down in my chair and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up, it was almost bedime. The desire to crawl under the covers was strong, but I felt I really needed to check sky conditions, so I stepped outside in my nightie and looked up to see Orion, big as life, and the Pleiades as well. Those were just the pointers I needed to find Lovejoy! But I couldn't detect it with my naked eye, nor could I find it with binoculars. I was sure I was looking in the right spot, so I went back into the house, pulled on jeans and a fleece jacket, and carted a card table and the telescope out into the back yard. In an exceptional display of foresight, I had re-sighted the LED star-finder that afternoon after fiddling it out of whack by turning the wrong knobs when trying to turn it on. I pointed the LED at the target location and put my eye to the eyepiece. It was only necessary to pan a little bit before a fuzzy blob of light entered my field of view. I centered the comet in the 'scope and carefully changed eyepieces for a higher magnification which allowed me to distinguish the nucleus, if only faintly. I did not move up to the Barlow doubler because the comet nearly filled the field (it would have made a fuzzy object bigger but fuzzier). Needless to say, I was ecstatic with my "discovery," and now I'm anxious for the next astronomical event. After all, Lovejoy was a surprise to everyone.

Took The Leap

Day 78: When I turned sixteen, there was only one thing I wanted for my birthday: a telescope. Money was tight in those days, but when a long, skinny box showed up shortly after Christmas, I knew my request had been met. On the morning of my birthday, I tore into the wrappings with great excitement and spent the rest of the day peering through the limited optics of a $29 Tasco. I was thrilled, and spent much of my young adulthood looking at the moon and trying to make out the faint rings of Saturn.

As the years progressed, I moved across the country and the Tasco went into storage, forgotten until more than forty years later when I bought my present home. Like the Bubble Tree whose story was told earlier this month, my precious telescope had spent too much time in an unheated outbuilding, and the mirrors were damaged by moisture and cold, beyond any reasonable hope of repair. I told myself I'd get another one some day, but by then, I had learned enough about the subject to know I didn't want to waste my money on a cheap department-store model.

There were some stellar events which almost pushed me to a purchase. I'd seen the naked-eye spectacle of Comet West in 1976, and when Hale-Bopp came around in 1997, I observed it through binoculars, still reluctant to make the leap into serious astronomy, even at the entry level. But with Lovejoy on the horizon (literally, at this latitude), that old desire for a 'scope resurfaced.

It's easy to Clint-Eastwood yourself out of your price range when you're considering a telescope. "For a few dollars more," you can get clearer optics, a wider field of view, finer adjustments, etc. and so forth until you find yourself talking in four figures instead of three. At that point, you have to step back and ask yourself what you really need. Are you going to be searching for heretofore undiscovered deep-sky objects? Not likely! But do you really want to look for nebulae and galaxies, or would you be content to see a few double stars? Since my primary interests are comets, planets, lunar features and sunspots, I looked for a telescope which would give me the best possible viewing of those objects on a limited budget. After reading dozens of reviews and conferring with my "pet astronomers," I settled on the Orion StarBlast 4.5 reflector, present-to-self for a reprise of the occasion of that first acquisition.

Finding Lovejoy

Day 76: Comet Lovejoy is coming! I've given a very rough map here, translated from the "Sky & Telescope" version onto a star chart oriented specifically to my latitude, but it will give you an idea of where and when to look for this binocular/naked-eye object. It promises to be a real treat for anyone with a telescope, weather permitting. Get it now, folks! It won't be back for approximately 8,000 years!