neowise

[corvi]

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 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!

Comments

[juli]

Even including hints of both tails!

[twoeleven]

I can't even find the damn thing. The northwest sector of my sky is the brightest, and it's very hazy to boot. :(

[corvi]

That is incredibly unfair. :(

[sistawendy]

I was in high school in Florida when Halley was most recently nearby. That's not a very good place to watch a comet from. Hyakutake and, even better, Hale-Bopp were visible right around my son's birth, when I lived in Ballard. Lots of people walked to Sunset Hill Park every evening to see them. Happiness.

[dorchadas]

This is the second post in a row making me sad I live in a major city.

[m_cobweb]

The first time we tried to see it, we went to the nearby overlook and managed to see a lot of haze and a bit of Whidbey--we were just a bit too late for clear sky. So we checked the sky the next few nights and tried again, and went out right after sunset. The light was very slow leaving the sky, but it was a beautiful view and we could hear the tide and people nearby talking softly while they also waited, and finally, gradually, Neowise appeared, looking just as it was supposed to. It was so much one of those special life moments that I could recognize it while it was happening.

[spiritcoda]

wow.. that is just amazing I always wanted to see one. i guess the only chance I got was just a few pass by and blinks, as sometimes the sky is so cloudy where I am from.

Thanks for sharing the photo... though