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.