Seeing a comet and a comet ghost

UPDATE - 9 am Tuesday - Got a minor shock this morning. I was out about 4:30 am using the LX90 8-inch on Mars. Have to admit I don't have much patience with planetary observing and the dew was heavy and quick, so about 5 am I climbed the short ladder and stood looking out through the slit in the dome at the whole sky and just enjoying the winter constellations when suddenly I saw an Orionid. Nice. Then a second fainter one. Hey. Then a third, much brighter one - all in less than 10 minutes. That was a higher rate than I got Sunday morning when these dudes were supposed to peak. But I guess it was a freak burst. I looked for another 10 minutes and was rewarded with a very slow moving, magnitude 2, stray. Usually don't see something that slow when we're riding the front side of the Earth,

Of course, according to spacewather.com some folks out on a mountain top in Hawaii were seeing one Orionid a minute at the peak. That's a real shower - but then, most of us don't have quite those klnds of observing conditions. As I said, I kept looking for about another 10 minutes - casually - and did not see any more Orionids. So I checked on Saturn - a bit blurry through the dew - and Venus. Venus is now significantly smaller and down to the "quarter moon" phase, but boy is it bright. Always find it fascinating the way it moves away from us, gets smaller, yet shows more of its disc, so pretty much maintains its brightness. Nice juggling act, Venus!

UPDATE - 5:45 am Monday Oct 22 - OK, for some the Orionids were great - location, location, location - and timing. And last night I did get to see Comet Loneos with several club members down at East Beach in Westport.

Both meteors and comets depend a lot on luck, location, and timing. Last night didn't look any clearer to me than the night before, but this time Loneos was reasonably easy to pick up in the 15X45 IS. However, to see even the faintest hint of a tail you needed a big scope. Mostly you saw a bright core and fainter halo - a greenish blob - even in a 12-inch. From that location you could follow right down to perhaps 4 degrees above the ground before it got lost in the muck.

As for the meteors, the key location was a mountain top in Hawaii. There, according to spaceweather.com, folks got treated to one meteor per minute. Not clear how much of that was due to being high atop the Haleakala Summit on Maui, and how much was simply a lucky break - at that particular moment the Earth was going through a rich pocket of Comet Halley dust.

My experience of 10-20 meteors an hour seems to be more like the norm reported.

UPDATE - 5:35 am , Sunday - Well, the meteor shower was better, but I'm still concerned these are over-hyped and although I try to temper my enthusiasm, I still don't prepare people enough for the reality of a meteor shower. The term itself - shower - just gives the wrong impression.

I said yesterday "I would be very happy if I saw one meteor every five minutes. " I'm not "very happy." Mildly pleased, perhaps. In about an hour and 15 minutes of casual observing, I saw 10 Orionids and a couple of strays. That was nice. And it was terrific being outside at that hour and getting reacquainted with the winter stars and binocular highlights. And yes, I spent some time sipping tea and some time looking through binoculars and my skies are not pristine - so maybe somewhere, someone with more patience and better skies saw the predicted 20-50 meteors per hour. But I suspect my experience comes much closer to what the average person can be expected to see - maybe 10 an hour - or fewer. I think my rule of thumb from now on will be to take the low number in the prediction and cut it in half, then say this is the most folks can expect ;-) Hey - this is the closest most of us will ever come to being visited from outer space, so we should appreciate it, but then, I think most people think they are going to see osmething closer to a fireworks display - which the typical m,eteor shower certainly is NOT.

UPDATE - 7:45 pm - NO LUCK - I looked long and hard with the 15X45s and saw nothing. I took half a dozen pictures and one showed something near where the comet should be - but it would take a whole lot of imagination to turn what it showed into a comet. I saw stars in the vicinity to magnitude 6 - no comet. Moon too bright? Maybe some haze near the horizon? I don't know.

How's that for a halloween story?

If local weather predictions hold we should have interesting observing just after sunset tonight and a couple hours before sunrise tomorrow. That's when we should get a look at one new comet and the ghost of a very old and famous one. (All my specific times and positions are local to Westport, MA - but of course will hold generally true throughout the country. Oh - and if the weather doesn't break in time tonight, then we should have interesting observing tomorrow morning and tomorrow night ;-)

Tonight, Comet Loneos should be an interesting binocular object and easy for you to find as long as you have a good western horizon. Right now, the forecast is for it to clear by then. Your key to finding it will be whether or not you can find your old friend Arcturus. If in doubt, look for the three stars in the Dipper's handle. Follow their curve bach towards the west and Arcturus should be a fist and a half above the horizon. Once you locate Arcturus, look at it in binoculars. If you put Arcturus near the top edge of your field, Comet Loneos should be a small, greenish blob near the bottom left. (How big? Not very - like an out of focus star.)

Will it sport a tail? I'm not sure. The tail shows in photos - I suspect a small one will show in binoculars. However, seeing it at all is all a matter of timing. The sun sets just before six pm and that's when the race begins - the race between the comet appearing to rush towards the horizon and the sky getting dark enough to see it. I plan to start looking by 6:30. At that point the comet will be about 14-degrees above the horizon. (Arcturus is roughly at azimuth 280 degrees - a bit north of west.) I hope to pick up the comet between 6:45 and 7. By 7 pm it's only 10 degrees above the horizon. (Jupiter at that time will be over in the southwest about 12 degrees. If you can see it easily - then you have an idea about how high to look for the comet, but remember, a bit north of west.)

Loneos will take another hour to set, but I suspect we'll lose track of it by 7:30 at the latest. It all depends on how clear the skies are. The forecast is for excellent transparency. Let's hope so. If it's cloudy tonight, I'll try again tomorrow night, same place, same times - but the comet will have put a little more distance between it an Arcturus, so it may not be quite in the same binocular field.

Now for the ghost of comets past - and about the good morning. The wee hours of the morning is when the Orionid meteor shower should be peaking. And what are these meteors? Why dust grains left behind from none-other than the most famous comet of all, Halley's Comet! (Whenever I think of a comet I thnk of the character "Pigpen" in Peanuts, leaving a trail of dust behind him as he walked!)

This is not a huge shower, but it may be surprisingly good. The moon sets by 1:30 am tomorrow and at that time Orion will have climbed up about 30 degrees above the horizon to the southeast. Since these appear to radiate from Orion, any time after the moon sets should be a good time to look. What can you expect? I hate meteor shower predictions. They always seem to be on the high side to me. But the prediction is in the 20-50 per hour range. I'm a bit dubious. I would be very happy if I saw one meteor every 5 minutes - but to do that you must be looking up constantly. In other words, position yourself on a comfortable lounge chair and use a sleeping bag - it will be chilly! The show should go on right until the Sun starts interfering around 5:30 am.

So a comet show on one end of the evening and the remnants of a comet - a meteor shower - on the other end. Not spectacular, perhaps, but very interesting ;-)