Comet NeoWise

pistolpetes11 wrote: »

And you’re out of here ......

Buy that man a drink.

Oriel chose to pitch his tent in this forum of late since he was run out of the Astronomy one after being shown to know very little of what he's talking about. He was put to shame by other posters there who paragraph by paragraph debunked each of his ramblings. He came here thinking he'd get an easy ride from people with less understanding of astrophysics and orbital rotations, though that backfired on him too.

Glad to see the back of him.

igCorcaigh wrote: »

Do ye think it would be possible to see it from a city, with the light pollution and buildings?
Should I take a walk? It's partially cloudy.

I'm in very dark countryside and it's only visible to me as a very very faint blur.
I'd say you'd be clutching at straws, especially with cloud cover.

Is it really an insult to be called a follower of Isaac Newton? I don't feel that insulted actually.

Oriel seemed to have some kind of an issue with the two different frames of reference that modern astronomy has developed. It's worth mentioning what these are, along with the fact that I never thought of myself as a proponent or an enthusiast for either of them.

One frame of reference is equatorial, and deals with "right ascension" as longitude and "declination" as latitude.

The other frame is ecliptic, and uses celestial longitude and latitude. The Sun is (for the purposes of this discussion) always at zero latitude because the ecliptic plane is our orbital plane, and the Sun is the centre of that (it does wobble slightly due to gravitational perturbations, on a very small scale). On June 21st at the summer solstice, the Sun is at its highest declination of the year (23.4 deg N) but at zero deg latitude. The two longitude systems begin at the vernal equinox and I believe they will stay at the 1900 epoch location of it through the centuries, as the Sun's apparent orbital nodes change (it's the earth's orbital nodes actually changing, but against the system being used, it appears that the Sun is shifting).

I know Oriel didn't like that concept and he associated it with Newton, then when he discovered I was more or less following orthodox astronomy in my research, he decided I was part of the Newton problem.

All I can say is, I understand the two systems and tend to use R.A. and dec more than lat-long. That doesn't mean that I am a "proponent" of either system, like you if I want to take part in scientific discussions, I need to understand the frames of reference being used in them. Otherwise we have anarchy where anyone can impose any system they want and discuss things as if other people knew about that system.

The irony is that even my basic interest in astronomy puts me rather at odds with the weather community who are dead set against external drivers in this day and age.

Anyway, today make a note that the earth is in the position that the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn alignment will take up mid-October. We passed Jupiter on the 14th and Saturn on the 20th. In about three months, they will reach the same heliocentric longitude -- the one we are at today. They won't quite appear aligned to us because of parallax, we will be off at right angles to that alignment, and one-fifth of the distance from the Sun compared to Jupiter (one-tenth compared to Saturn). They will appear most closely aligned in December as we swing back around towards their alignment vector which will begin to move away from the Sun as Jupiter overtakes Saturn.

Gave it one last go last night to drive an hour out of Dublin and luckily getting an hour of mostly clear skies. Had to use binoculars but very clear view of Neowise with that. About the same or slightly clearer than the photos I took, like the attached.

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Had that same view eight hours later here, by then the comet made a "ten to six" pattern with those two faint stars (faint to naked eye), found a useful procedure for you binocular users to consider, focus on the crescent moon before looking at anything else, you'll find it easier to focus your view as the Moon tells you right away about focus issues.

Moon will be out a bit longer this evening (here, I think most of you are clouded out) and in a few more days, gibbous nearly full moon phase near Jupiter and Saturn.

Thanks for that great tip on the focussing. In fact I could also use that on my camera zoom lens (manual focus only as it’s via a lens adapter) to get proper focus on stars. The lens allows a little variability in infinity focus.