I'm pretty sure it's not my eyes. They've degraded enough over the years that the FAA says I now have to wear glasses when flying. :( It's probably more like Joan commented in that seeing conditions may be a bit better here than down your way. When I'm taking data I routinely get down to 19th magnitude and sometime even fainter so skies here are pretty good. Maybe before the Moon gets much bigger and the comet gets any fainter you might want to "get outta town" a ways and try spotting Lovejoy from there. Clear skies, patrick On 23 Jan 2015, at 04:11, Dave Gary <davegary@me.com> wrote:
You’ve got better vision than me. Must be all those carrots. I laid down in the driveway observatory night-before-last and did, basically, the same thing you did (minus the airplanes). No go. I couldn’t make out anything naked-eye. I couldn’t even conjure an image naked-eye with averted vision. Must be all that exposure from work or old eyes or both. Strange, it’s so bright in my binoculars and they’re 7X35.
Dave
On Jan 22, 2015, at 21:38, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Was just out looking at the comet with 10x50s and it seemed bright enough that it might be visible naked eye. So I lay down on my observatory floor for several minutes waiting for my eyes to dark adapt. Funny but during that time I saw two airplanes fly right through the Pleiades.
Once adapted I used the binocs to find the comet again so I'd know right where to look.
No luck looking straight at it but with averted vision there was definitely something there and the longer I looked the more obvious it became.
So, my first (barely) naked eye comet in quite some time.
patrick
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