First and last:
Bookmark
At one point the tail of that sucker stretched across MORE THAN HALF the night sky. With a fairly decent telescope you could even see it as it moved minute to minute.
Comets are fickle things. Would love for another big one to come out of nowhere like that, as Hale-Bopp also did the following year.
There is something very humbling about looking at the stars. We don't do it nearly enough these days.
Paul Chodas? Really?
>Snicker<
Anyone catch Venus and the crescent moon in close proximity these past few days? Venus is so bright it looks like the headlight of an approaching helicopter.
First and last:
Two new comets in approach to Sun casually concur into same field near Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51) in this image taken on December 1st, 2016. At the left bottom, the recently discovered C/2016 U1 (NEOWISE) shows a fuzzy and green coma due to its composing of ionized carbonic gas, while at upper right is the comet C/2015 V2 (Johnson) with very different morphology, more dusty that gassy, shows a small and whitis coma from which departs a short tail of dust.
Both comets could be observed using binoculars in the future: NEOWISE at the end of this month of December before immerse into light of dawn, of which perhaps will not come out because is possible the comet to disintegrate at approach to Sun; comet Johnson will reach its maximum brightness on next spring 2017.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/online-gallery/comets-in-conjunction/
I say, if it’s visible, we call it the Trump Comet!
Should we invest in black Nikes and purple robes?
It’s the Comet Empire!
RE: viewing of comets through telescopes:
Usually a naked eye comet is far more pleasing to look at with the naked eye, or with very wide field binoculars, rather than through a telescope because the coma itself is usually relatively featureless compared to a sky-crossing tail. The only exception to that in my experience was Hale-Bopp, which had a visible corkscrewing of gas jets that made it look uncannily like the Whirlpool Galaxy when viewed in my 14.5” Newtonian telescope.
In my comet viewing experience, Huakutake was the best (so I’ll assign it a 10), Hale-Bopp was 2nd best at about a 7, and everything else that I’ve seen was a 2 or less.
I’m looking forward to Comet Trump.