Comet Hartley 2

10.05.10

posted by: Aaron McNeely

I have observed the comet for the past two nights. It is currently passing beneathe the “W” of Cassiopeia, an area rich with stars and clusters. I used my TeleVue 85mm refractor for observing. This scope provides a nice, wide field for observing faint extended objects such as comets. The view was quite beautiful. I swept the scope over to observe the Owl Cluster which was nearby.

The comet resembles an amorphous glow with a brighter center. I thought that I could detect a long, straight tail. This was extremely faint, and might have been a chance alignment of faint stars. I will observe again tonight.

This is a nice comet, and it is well-placed for evening observing. Thanks.

Comet Hartley 2 Sky Map: http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/CometHartley2-bw.jpg

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 9:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Comet Hartley 2”

  1. tloughran Says:
    October 5th, 2010 at 11:48 am

    Cool. Are you using ccd autoguiding, and if so, have you got an image capture capability? Love to see it. Meanwhile, I’ll go out an look for myself:)

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.