January 2, 2016 I managed to get to a green zone with my dob on this very nice evening. Unusual to have a clear sky AND temperatures in the mid-30's in early January! There was noticeable movement after just one hour at 60x, toward Southwest. No tail was observed, but a very slight green was noted. I often have trouble with dim color observations, so I thought this one was perhaps a little stronger in that regard. The comet finally got far enough up that it was again to be observable at this latitude. I arrived at Broemmelsiek Park at 2:53AM and fought to find it in the 25x100s. It was low in the Southeast, and good star hops were hard to come by. I knew it was very near/Southwest of the Helix, so I went into the park without my charts, leaving them in my parked car. My normal star-hop is from Skat in Aquarius, but it was even lower in the East at 3AM. I tried to find via Capricornus, and later via Fomalhaut. Finally, around 3:30AM I found "the Helix" (!), very faint and amorphous, and tried to find X1 below it, and failed. I drew the star field, then kept trying. Around 3:55, the object was almost lost to extinction from the coming dawn, and I retreated. When I got to my car, I checked charts again. What I drew was not the Helix! I was disappointed not to have seen (and thus exempted any possible doubt of confusion with) the Helix, but I am personally confident of the X1 viewing due to both the FOV match and that if either of these two objects were 'extinct' by the light pollution or elevation, the Helix would be so first. I'm hoping to catch one or two more views of this comet in the coming month or two. It is heading South and will certainly be out of my reach later this week. It has a slightly Northwestern motion in early July, when it will be an evening object below Sagittarius and Scorpius and I like to catch it then also if possible. |