My parents took me to see Halley's comet when I was a kid; it's one of my earliest memories. The newspaper printed an astrolabe sort of thing you glued onto cardboard and cut out (I think we used a Raisin Bran box), then knotted on a string with a washer to be the vertical reading. They showed me the comet with binoculars - one parent would find the comet using the Raisin Bran astrolabe and binoculars, then tried to hold the binoculars perfectly still while the other parent picked me up and tried to put my face up to the binoculars.
It looked like every other star to me; I have no idea if I was looking at the right one. Did I even see it? It was not a great viewing setup, the comet was far away from earth, on the other side of the sun for the whole apparition. I was cold and tired and much more interested in swinging the astrolabe washer in front of the flashlight as a shadow puppet.
Last night![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
juli and I went out to look for comet Neowise. We live surrounded by mountains and some forest, and the sea is the wrong direction, so we poked around various locations looking for a clear view and watched the owls, bats, satellites, shooting stars, and humans smoking weed. I thought about Halley's Comet a lot. Would we know the comet when we saw it? Or would it just be another star, of no particular distinction without a telescope or a long exposure photo?
We knew it immediately when it came into view. It was like something out of a fairy tale. It looked like a luminous milkweed seed, drifting stationary against the dark sky. It looked like a comet.
juli took this photo of it. There were no surprises revealed by camera cleverness: the photo was brighter, but undeniably the experience of looking at the photo was the experience of looking at the sky.
Look at it in the next couple days if you get a chance!
It looked like every other star to me; I have no idea if I was looking at the right one. Did I even see it? It was not a great viewing setup, the comet was far away from earth, on the other side of the sun for the whole apparition. I was cold and tired and much more interested in swinging the astrolabe washer in front of the flashlight as a shadow puppet.
Last night
juli and I went out to look for comet Neowise. We live surrounded by mountains and some forest, and the sea is the wrong direction, so we poked around various locations looking for a clear view and watched the owls, bats, satellites, shooting stars, and humans smoking weed. I thought about Halley's Comet a lot. Would we know the comet when we saw it? Or would it just be another star, of no particular distinction without a telescope or a long exposure photo?We knew it immediately when it came into view. It was like something out of a fairy tale. It looked like a luminous milkweed seed, drifting stationary against the dark sky. It looked like a comet.
juli took this photo of it. There were no surprises revealed by camera cleverness: the photo was brighter, but undeniably the experience of looking at the photo was the experience of looking at the sky.Look at it in the next couple days if you get a chance!
