[meteorite-list] How I Found My New Comet (C/2006 T1 Levy)

From: MexicoDoug <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Oct 5 15:38:14 2006
Message-ID: <002b01c6e8b5$80363a80$f2068cc9_at_0019110394>

Ron, Beautiful narrative by a poetic comet hunter!

Please don't miss Rob Matson's comet C/2006 M4 (SWAN), currently weighing in
at 25 times brighter than Levy's latest comet in the dynasty will ever get.
It's easy to find if you can time it right and have a clear view of the
horizon before Sunrise in the Northern hemisphere. I have a finder chart at
www.diogenite.com/rob.JPG (to be posted by 14:45 CDT = 19:45 UT)

Rob's is the brightest comet in the sky at the moment and is pretty much as
bright as SW3 (73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3) ever got in its dying pass. As a
matter of fact, Rob's comet is one of the four brightest comets in in the
past two years.

A keen naked eye in the right place can see it! (But don't think that
you'll be the lucky one - any binocular won't disappoint). At the moment
Rob's SWAN comet has gone to the dogs for latitudes south of N. 25 degrees.
If you are north of this latitude, though, it will pass within 2 degrees of
a 2.9 magnitude bright star called Cor Coroli, between Friday and Sunday.
That is the brightest star in the constellation Canes Venatici, the
herdsman's hunting dogs.

This is after slobbering out of Leo's mouth and then dipping out of the Big
Dipper (~Ursa Major, in the bear's feet), and a little brushing the hair of
Coma Berenices (Queen Bernice's Hair). How fitting! Coma is the word for
Hair and why comets are called comets (little hairies). And Cor Coroli,the
bright star right next to the comet now, means Charles' Heart ... was named
by Edmund Halley after his king was executed! The king and his Dad had
pissed off the same Puritans when it was named ... and somehow some Pilgrims
took off to Plymouth as a result...Yep, the Cometman himself was all feely
about this!

This is an easy comet to find with any size of ordinary binoculars. Here's
how:

You just find Cor Coroli and put it in the farthest left side of the field
in your binoculars for these three days. Simple, the big Dipper's handle
will be on your left side, you see the star Cor Coroli (mag. 2.9 = as bright
as the average of the two dimmest stars in the Big Dipper asterism), and put
Charles' Heart in the field of your binocular to pin down the left of your
binocular field and look to the right (direction opposite the Big Dipper
Handle).

Most binoculars have about a 5 degree diameter field width. I've indicated
this as a 5 degree in diameter circle on the finder chart for scale.

Cor Coroli is the brightest star between the Big Dipper and Bernice's Hair.
It's also half way. So check out how nice here hair is and get lost in the
piles of stars that make it up this clustering. If you are north of 35
latitude, check Sunrise wherever you are, get yourself oriented (The comet
will be one hour counterclockwise (toward the north=toward the Big Dipper)
from the place of Sunrise (east). It will be barely above the horizon for
most people (unless you are say as far north as 48 degrees latitude,when
it'll be a fist at arm's length higher).

Based on Sunrise, the best time in mid latitudes to see Rob's comet is 1
hour 20 minutes before Sunrise or earlier. But: If you are right at the
southerly limit, say, northern Mexico, Miami, NWA, Rajasthan, or a couple
hundred kilometers north of Hong Kong(25 degrees latitude), you can push it
to 55-60 minutes before Sunrise.

So you got to have an unimpeded view to the horizon, a pair of binoculars
and a dew pair proof slippers, set the alarm early and devour the view of
this celestial beauty Rob discovered.

Note: The Comet is named SWAN because all comets discovered with the aid of
the SOHO go down this way. Rob nailed this one good right of an image
gridline! It's a hyperbolic orbit comet. That mean's unless something
drastic happens, it will be headed out of our Solar System and this is your
only chance - it will head out - and that means it's out of the Solar nest.
How it got here is any scientist's guess. Maybe it is an interstellar
traveler, or maybe it was disturbed from the Oort sphere. Because this
comet snuck in behind the Sun from down under, and just for a couple of
months at most is looping around above the Solar plane, so it's best to
screen itself from the Sun the whole time - and will head back out into the
uncharted... Folks down under will get a chance to see Rob's comet, but
only with a large telescope when it is hurdling back from the general area
it came from down under the Solar plane...

Happy Seeing and Clear Skies!
Doug
PS Rob - I haven't seen your comet yet. Yes I am an irritable wreck this
whole week, waking up at 4:00 AM just to get clouded out every day since
last Saturday...we have a "phenomenon" going around in our sky as Summer
just met Winter:-(







----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 11:41 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] How I Found My New Comet (C/2006 T1 Levy)



http://skytonight.com/news/4306207.html

How I Found My New Comet

The prolific comet hunter recalls the story of his latest find.
by David H. Levy
October 4, 2006
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Note: In the following account, Sky & Telescope contributing
editor David Levy tells how he discovered comet C/2006 T1 last Monday
from his Jarnac Observatory in Vail, Arizona.
The new Comet Levy was his first visual discovery in 12 years, and it
brings his total comet finds to 22 (9 visually and 13 photographically).
C/2006 T1 reaches perihelion on October 9th at a distance of 1.072
astronomical units from the Sun. It
is not expected to get brighter than about 10th or 11th magnitude. The
comet is currently in Leo, moving southeastward to Sextans. To get the
comet's orbital elements and ephemeris, go to the Central Bureau for
Astronomical Telegrams
<http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/2006T1.html>.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The morning of October 2, 2006, was party cloudy and warm as I set up
Miranda, my 16-inch f/5 Newtonian reflector, to begin my comet hunt. As
other telescopes whirred nearby, taking their automated search exposures
for comets, I began searching along a strip of sky that soon brought me
to Saturn. Then I did a double take. About 0.6?? away there was a small,
fuzzy, 10th-magnitude glow. My first reaction was that it must be a
ghost image of some kind. But it looked too real for that. To check, I
looked through my Meade 8-inch "finderscope," which was mounted atop the
16-inch just for emergencies like this. The object appeared fainter in
the 8-inch, but in exactly the same place. A quick check of my star
atlas revealed no bright NGC objects in that area.

But I've been fooled by reflections before, especially with CCD images.
As dawn began, I decided on a final check. One of my survey telescopes ??"
a Meade 14-inch telescope with HyperStar coupled to a Canon digital SLR
camera ??" had just completed its morning run. I quickly aimed it at the
suspect's position and took a series of exposures. I went inside the
house, downloaded the images, and then displayed them on the computer
screen. The images clearly showed a real, moving object. With my heart
pounding with excitement, I e-mailed a quick report to Dan Green of the
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, notifying him of the
possible new comet. But I still wasn't 100% sure.

So I called my friend Tom Glinos in Ontario, Canada, whose remotely
operated 25??-inch RC Optical Systems telescope at Jarnac Observatory
has been doing yeoman's work in finding
asteroids over the last two years. "I instinctively knew something
interesting had happened," Glinos recalls. "We have checked each other's
'discoveries' in the past, and this case was no different. David and I
carefully examined his images, trying to eliminate any possible optical
illusions or misidentifications. In the end we were left with a comet
with no visible tail."

Later in the day, a simple message that gave the object's position and
brightness went up quietly on the Minor Planet Center's NEO (Near-Earth
Object) Confirmation Page. This way, observers
around the world could try to confirm the new comet before it rose again
for me. Richard Miles, president of the British Astronomical Association,
was among the first observers. "I was
totally fooled by Saturn, being less than a degree away," he notes. "I
first thought [the object] might have been confused with one of Saturn's
satellites. Then I mistook the glow seeping into the side of the [CCD]
frame as being Saturn itself. In fact, it was the new comet."

The following morning, October 3rd, the comet had moved enough away from
Saturn to shine beautifully by itself. Later that day Dan Green issued
IAU Circular 8757, which announced Comet Levy, C/2006 T1, to the rest of
the world. After a hectic and wondrous 24 hours, helped by fellow
observers in Hungary, Italy, the UK, and the US, I finally enjoyed my
first uninterrupted look at this new cosmic interloper.

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Received on Thu 05 Oct 2006 03:36:02 PM PDT