Beverly Spicer

7 Responses to “I see the light — of comet holmes”

1. 1 Deborah Byrd Nov 20th, 2007 at 6:08 am

   Great picture of someone standing in the city looking at Comet Holmes. It truly blew my mind to be able to do that. But your views from the country sound marvelous as well. I wonder how long the comet will remain visible? That’s part of its mystery … no one knows.

2. 2 Beverly Spicer Nov 20th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

   Deborah, TRULY, it is mind blowing to be able to look up in the sky and see the Comet Holmes with or without the naked eye. The first night we viewed it, even with three of us it took us a while to locate it. My friends who live out in the country know the sky pretty well — after all, it’s a nightly show — so they knew the general area, but we didn’t quite know what we were looking for. We only knew that there wouldn’t be a tail streaking behind like most comets, that just the head would be visible at that time, and it would look somewhat like a star. It was such a faint object in the massively populated sky that the search took a while. “Maybe that’s it.” “No.” “Maybe over there, that’s it.” “Is that it?” “No, THAT’s it!” Finally, we did find it, and then each of us zeroed in on it with the binoculars while we were setting up the telescope. I definitely preferred the view through the binocs, and the first vision of it magnified that way just nearly knocked us all off our feet. After that, locating it with the naked eye was easy, and it has been fun to watch it change its position as time progresses. It is such a wonderfully amazing sight to see. I remember a few years ago when the Comet Kohoutec was visible from my front porch right here in the city. I don’t know how it is for professional astronomers, but for an amateur stargazers, comets can hardly be topped for exhilarating experiences!

3. 3 Vernon Schwartz Dec 11th, 2007 at 11:02 am

   Did nobody, other than I and a friend, see the fast-moving comet last night, Dec.10? I first saw it at about 7pm. I live in SC, by the way. It started out near the Comet Holmes. I thought I was just seeing Holmes, but at a much greater intensity. It was so bright that I easily saw its reflection in the glass door to my house as I was going inside. I know what a comet looks like, and this was definitely a comet. The white core and white tail could have even been seen if I had sunglasses on. The dust cloud was about half the size of a full moon. In 20 minutes, it was in Caseopeia and barely visible! It disappeared from the unaided eye shortly after passing through Caseopeia to the north. About 35 minutes after I first saw it, it was gone! There were a couple of faint meteors from its direction. Did we almost get hit?! I have never heard of a comet moving this fast against the background of stars like this one.

4. 4 Beverly Spicer Dec 11th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

   Dear Vernon,

   Good Heavens! Literally!

   I don’t know what you saw, but I am going to try to find out. I’ve written Deborah Byrd, and perhaps she or her panel of experts can tell us the story. I’ve never heard of a meteor lasting 35 minutes, and on the other hand, neither have I heard of a comet behaving that way. The only thing I could possibly think of would be the shuttle, which crosses the arc of the sky and has a long visible plasma trail.

   Hang on a while, and we’ll try to find out!

5. 5 Vernon Schwartz Dec 11th, 2007 at 1:42 pm

   Sorry, it was a rocket fuel dump. I would have never guessed that a fuel dump would resemble a comet so closely. http://www.spaceweather.com/

6. 6 Beverly Spicer Dec 11th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

   Mystery solved! Thanks, Vernon. Apparently the Earth Sky community has been having a lot of communication about the event this morning!

7. 7 buying binoculars uk Mar 1st, 2008 at 12:37 pm

   Hi,

   That was really amazing!, wonder what kind of binoculars this guy is using?

   Thanks,
   buying binoculars uk

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