Observing log

The moonless sky is crisp and clear--a perfect night for tracking down Comet Machholz. Around 1:30 this morning, I pointed my little ETX 90 with a 26mm eyepiece (48x) towards Taurus in the west and quickly found the comet. It's a beautiful sight, brilliant yet diffuse. It was very hard to distinguish any kind of a tail in my light polluted skies; rather, surrounding the bright nucleus was a pale blue haze. The comet's coma consumed roughly the size of a full moon in my field of view. Machholz was also prominent in a pair of cheap, low-power binoculars. After adjusting my eyes to the darkness (and knowing where to look) I was also easily able to spot the comet with my naked eye, where it appears as an obvious blur in the sky compared to the neighboring stars. This was perhaps the most enjoyable aspect--being able to look up in the sky without peering through a lense and seeing a blazing ball of ice and rock racing through the heavens at thousands of miles per hour.

This doesn't compare to the memorable Hale-Bopp. But if you fail to take a moment one night over the next week to glimpse little Machholz, you're still missing out on a beautiful sight.