We watched it to the north over the Atlantic last night. It was quite faint; I couldn't see it by looking directly at it, but could see it by viewing with off-center vision. It was visible until just after sunrise, about half-way across the ocean.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
anyone remember seeing Comet Kohoutek.
?
back in ....."73"

and Hale Bopp in "97"

Kohoutek was my first comet. Hale/Bopp and Hyakutake way after that and a whole bunch of other ones I've seen through telescopes(never naked eye) until Neowise popped up.

I have a terrible memory, but there was another naked eye comet that I took pics of other than Hale/Bopp. I will eventually find those images and see the date to match it up when I have the time.

Here is how it looked in MN on the 15th about 11:00 pm.

My skies are very bright, but I can see it in the evenings with binoculars. It is cool.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
Aren't we supposed to sacrifice something?

cherry pie ,
I think we are supposed to consume cherry pie,
with half of a scoop of vanilla ice creme

I was able to see it last night around 11PM local time...to the north, between the horizon and the Big Dipper.

Even with a pair of binos, camera zoom, and low powered scope, not nearly as bright as the photos are showing. Basically a faint dot with a very faint tail.

But still very, very cool.

Boss

Dang... I was up in the High Uintas this weekend and had an amazing view of the Milky Way, but didn't think about looking for the comet... Even had my 300mm lens.

I think a lot of the great photos are taken with longer exposure times.

I tried to see it last night, but no joy. It was too low to the horizon and there was a layer of haze that screened lower light objects. If it’s clear tonight, I’ll give it another try.

another attempt at viewing tonight - the sky was less obscured by cloud cover today - hope that extends through the evening

My wife and I just came in after viewing it, and we were both AMAZED! We've been looking at it after sunset during out evening walks so it wasn't as stunning as others I've seen. Also, it hasn't been naked eye. Finally, the skies are clear and dark so we had perfect conditions. It is still naked eye AND the tail is about a field of view in my Cabela's 12x50s. My wife was finally impressed...which is difficult because astronomy bores the heck out of her.

Took me a bit to see it tonite. Was a bit higher in the sky than it has been. Still good viewing though. Very cool to see.

I took the family on a road trip this past weekend out to the Columbia river gorge and we stayed at a vineyard. The only light pollution was from the lights around the walkways and made for an impressively clear view of the comet. It was easy to find, and the view with an 8X monocular was pretty nice. Definitely not seen one with such a bright trail before.

WildSig, REALLY nice!

This was from tonight. I'm not an astrophotographer and I don't have the image processing software to enhance this image. I just brightened it a hair to show a little more detail in the tail.(if image isn't already full-size, click on it)

Excellent!

I have so enjoyed looking at this. I am really going to miss it.

It is amazing to think it will be more than 6000 years before it makes it way back. Wonder if anything will be here then. Crazy.

A good pick from the Porsche club.

I had always kind of assumed that comets had a mostly circular orbit, affected by the gravity of the sun enough to keep them locked into our general area of space, but circular so that they always came back around.

When hearing about Neowise and it's 6,800 year orbit, I decided to look up the orbit to see how far out it went. I was very surprised to see that this comet comes into our solar system and, for all intents and purposes, does a 180 degree turn around the sun and heads directly away for 3,400 years before doing another 180 and heading back.

What I could not find, is there another celestial body at the other end of the Neowise orbit that makes it turn back around? Or is it affected by something else?

It bogles my mind that something could move that far away, and then turn that sharply back around.

Think of a juggler tossing 9 balls in a circular pattern from waist to head with and then tossing another ball up twenty feet in the air.

His sternum would approximate the sun's location and gravitational influence. So the 10th ball rises to the farthest point of "orbit" and then is drawn back by the gravitational effect of the sun.

Since there is no other body that the sun, with greater gravitational effect to the comet, it is in very long elliptical period of rotation around the sun.

To observe it from a long sideways distance, you would see it speed up as it "falls" toward the sun, and then slow down as it "rises" away until it is barely moving at the farthest end of it's period orbit, then starts "falling" back towards the sun and ever picking up speed again.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
To observe it from a long sideways distance, you would see it speed up as it "falls" toward the sun, and then slow down as it "rises" away until it is barely moving at the farthest end of it's period orbit, then starts "falling" back towards the sun and ever picking up speed again.

Your explanation makes sense, and helps me visualize it.

But it still bogles my mind that something as large as a medium sized city, can move away from the sun at roughly 140,000 mph, albeit slowing as it goes, for 3,400 years, but then turn around because of the gravity of the sun. Simply amazing.