Update (Jan. 13, 2007): Evidently, the comet is visible in broad daylight. If you go out during the day and block the Sun behind a building or some other large object, the comet can be easily seen! That didn’t occur to me, and I’m kicking myself. I may try this tomorrow if it’s clear here. Anyway, in the video I say the comet is gone after last night, and that is clearly incorrect. Sorry about any confusion.
I went out to look for Comet McNaught again tonight. It wasn’t nearly as bright as yesterday, I think because it was lower and the horizon was a bit murkier tonight. In a flash of insight on my way home to observe it, I realized I should try to get it with the webcam. I wasn’t able to see it using just the ‘cam, but when I held it up to my binocs I was just able to capture it.
Since I had the video, I decided to make a short video blog about it. Enjoy.
January 12th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
very cool. You should do these more often.
January 13th, 2007 at 1:24 am
I agree with arcraig, but loose the head phones you look so “South Park”…. on the other hand… that’s not a bad thing…
January 13th, 2007 at 1:39 am
heh is that one of those cheap 12 dollar tripods? it looks just like mine.
January 13th, 2007 at 1:58 am
The SOHO hotshot is up, nifty video included. Good thing too, because I’ve been socked in with clouds and haven’t had a clear window to observe it first-hand.
January 13th, 2007 at 3:04 am
I like you. I once owned a 10 inch Astrola in my backyard observatory. It had a roll-off roof.
Nowadays I live in a condo.
Keep up the good work.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:04 am
You sure NASA didn’t fund your graphics.
Only joking, cool video though. Yesterday the BBCs was showing a small collection of viewers pictures sent in from different parts of the UK. A sample put up by the BBC can be seen here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6251663.stm
There’s also a link top and right of the pictures to a minute video of it over the good old US of A that isn’t bad for those who haven’t had a chance to see anything of it.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:35 am
I so badly wanted to see the comet for myself, without the tv or internet to show me. Alas, the clouds here have completely covered the sky for days and refuse to let up.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Oh man, clouds obscured my view all this time! Good thing you had that view Phil.
Say, seems you could pass for a radio DJ or something! Or a controller at one of the space centers.
I though McNaught is one of them 1,000 year or so comets?
I have an idea for using a webcam; you have a telescope, right? Why not try to adapt the webcam so that it goes where the eyepiece goes, sort of like a CCD?
Thanks for the video. I agree, you ought to do more of these!
January 13th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Yeah, I didn’t get to see it. Drat!!! Rats!!! Oh the humanity!!!
But good video Phil. Did you do those graphics on a Mac or PC?
January 13th, 2007 at 7:06 am
I packed up my binoculars and both cameras to head to my parking garage roof spot to see the comet after work yesterday…clouds in Houston. Arggh. I should have tried earlier in the week.
You should do videos like this more often. Loved the earth to sun diagram and the SOHO url - nice touch.
January 13th, 2007 at 8:01 am
I live in the UK and typically it’s been clouds clouds clouds every night from where I am.
Thanks anyway Phil!!!
Guess i’ve missed this one
Scott
January 13th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Thank you for your website and for this blog.
Finding it of interest.
Enjoyed the video; keep up the good work!
January 13th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I have to drop my hat in the ring. a once a month video cast by you would be great. As for pictures… depending on the web-camera some pvc piping could do the tick.
January 13th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
That was great. I agree that you should do those more often.
January 13th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
We tried to go out and see it last night, but I think we probably were just a bit too late after sunset. In Calgary, we’re blessed (cursed) with the Rocky Mountains on the horizon from the west to the south, and anything interesting had dropped behind them before we got there.
Venus was lovely and bright, though, and we spotted a (temporarily) UFO. It turned out to be a plane travelling directly along our line of sight, so it grew brighter for a long time without changing apparent position in the sky, until it finally turned.
But on the good side, I think we’ve found a good neighbourhood on the hillside that’s both convenient and dark enough the next time we want to go out and check out a meteor shower.
January 13th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
The headset is needed because my webcam has a petty junky microphone– I do have another videoblog I’ll post next week, and you’ll hear that it has level problems.
I enjoy doing stuff like this, and I really want to do more. But they take time. I also need better equipment, and software, and and and! But I will be doing them more. Thanks for the comments!
January 13th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
very nice clip! I really enjoyed it! Your graphic is excellent ;), NASA should take it into account ;)!
As said before, you should do things like that more often!
January 13th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
That was GREAT!!! Love it! Can’t wait to see more.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Oh, the joys of Youtube! Loved your video, graphics, the whole thing! You know, sometimes it’s not just about the quality of the equipment, it’s much more about the quality of the presenter. After my freshman year in college, I went back home to my small town that did not have a planetarium at the time. So I teamed up with the local science center at our mall, and with the help of the volunteers put together a makeshift planetarium in the dressing room of a vacant store. We put up a white sheet on the ceiling for the “stars” to be projected from a $30 kids’ planetarium projector, put a white sheet on one of the walls for the slides to be projected on to, and decorated the store with space posters and exhibits. It wasn’t much, but apparently my helpful school-age volunteers outside the store, and my one-woman planetarium shows were enough to draw in small crowds.
So there you go. That was a planetarium show as low-tech as they go and people STILL PAID to see it. I was frankly amazed by it, as I never expected it to work at all. But it did. You Phil, have the gift of being a good presenter, and I hope you continue to share it on Youtube for all of us once in awhile.
January 13th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
More news on this, its visible in daylight! So everybody in the northern hemisphere has got another chance of seeing it. From my blog: http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/2007/01/14/comet_mcnaught_now_visible_in_daylight
“It’s very close to the Sun so it’s probably best to position yourself so something is covering the Sun, like a building, but still exposing the sky near it. If you’re at mid-northern latitudes it’ll be towards the right hand side of the Sun. It’s only a few degrees away (just over twice the width of Orion’s belt) from the Sun, so it will be hard to spot in the glare.
If you’ve got a pair of binoculars they’ll probably help locate it, just make sure the Sun is covered before you start looking through them.”
Hopefully I’ll have some pictures tomorrow, but there’s already some posted on Space Weather here: http://spaceweather.com/comets/mcnaught/13jan07/
January 13th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Superb. I am thrilled to know a lot about Comet McNaught.
Is it visible from India?
January 13th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
BA,
Good work! I wouldn’t worry about the headset — combined with your sign-off (”…this is Phil Plait for Bad Astronomy.”), it sort of gave you the air of a traffic helicopter reporter.
I don’t know what kind of hardware you run (does your computer have a decent audio in port?), but you could probably just go to Radio Shack and buy a cheap clip-on “lavalier” mic for audio. If you wanted to get a little bit fancier (but not TOO expensive), there are some good USB microphones available now — they’re designed primarily for podcasters, so they’d be just right for you.
Desktop “stalk” microphones, OK sound quality
http://tinyurl.com/4geq9 — $30
http://tinyurl.com/h9xml — $35
More professional-style mics, better sound quality
http://tinyurl.com/cjbgs — $128
http://tinyurl.com/y9zmmc — $130
Drop me a line if you have any questions,
Lorne
(I’ll goad you into starting a podcast YET!)
January 13th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Hi,
In the video you mention that it will be a few years before the comet comes around again, but I checked a NASA site for the orbital elements and the eccentricity was greater than 1 (not by much though). I got my info from here:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?name=c/2006+P1
Is the information inaccurate or am I just misinterpreting it?
Thanks
January 13th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Hi Phil,
Yep great video blog entry. I’ve just spent the last couple of hours outside observing McNaught (in Auckland, New Zealand). Wow, it is indeed visible during full daylight hours. First found it at around 1500hrs NZT, after 3 attempts foiled by patchy cloud cover. Have had about a hour of great visibility. Was a bit of a challenge to locate with my scope (117mm reflector, cheapie) with eventually stumbled across it. Very cool indeed.
Cheers,
Joseph
Oh this page is a great help to southern hemisphere viewers.
http://msowww.anu.edu.au/%7Ermn/C2006P1.htm
January 14th, 2007 at 12:06 am
After attempting to find Comet McNaught on four evenings, I finally spotted it tonight.
Here’s a picture I took of it. http://www.scoremax.com/images/CometMcNaught.jpg
January 14th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Ernest– I couldn’t find a period anywhere for it. I should have checked the eccentricity! You’re right, it’s >1, which means this guy may be of here.
Lorne Ipsum, I just ordered a USB mike.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Thanks for the heads up Phil! Wouldn’t of thought to look for it during the day, but after reading your post took the scope out and found it within 30 seconds!
This is from an 8″ with a digital camera held up to the eyepiece, just like with your webcam: http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/161/img0349vi9.jpg
January 14th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Couldn’t find it in daylight here in Melbourne Australia but found it quickly after sunset - it was further from the sun than I expected from all that I’d read. Had great views through binoculars even though I was looking towards the city & through a haze of pollution. Once I knew where to look I could just make it out with the naked eye. It would be really spectacular in a dark sky!
January 14th, 2007 at 8:18 am
wow! just saw it in daylight… itÅ› 11:08am here in Venezuela and it can be seen with binoculars easily… but too dangerous to allow kids to see it… at our latitude (10.2 deg N) the comet seems to be in the lower left quadrant from the Sun.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Ernest you are misinterpreting the data, eccentricity is about the shape of the orbit (how much it differs from a circle) You should check for a (the major semiaxis) and see its like thousands of AU.. that means the comet will be some thousand times farther from the sun than the earth goes, so it will be a few millenia till it comes back, if it ever does.
Nice sight i’ll try do the building trick tomorrow if its not too late by then. Around 45 deg N here so i’ll be looking to the left of the Sun too
January 14th, 2007 at 10:14 am
PS i just googled a bit and eccentricity > 1 means hyperbolic orbit .. that means a one time transit.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Just to update my previous comment, I said the right hand side of the Sun for the northern hemisphere, I meant the left hand side.
3 in the morning brain spasm.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am
WOW, I’ve gotta admit, I’m quite impressed with this one! In fact, this stuff on Comet McNaught oughta rank extremely high on the scale of noteworthiness. Oddly enough though, to receive this astro-data from the very home of the BA is somewhat akin to receiving breaking news from the oval office of the very president himself.;)
Once again, thanks for sharing the skies with us mere earthlings!
January 14th, 2007 at 10:30 am
A one time transit? Guess that’s why it’s so bright. It’s never been here before. I wonder if the close solar approach will produce enough outgassing to seriously affect it’s orbit? How fun, to be around when a singular comet pays a visit,,,
GAry 7
January 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am
which mic did you buy, Phil? For this project we’re doing for the observatory (vodcasts), I bought a Blue Snowball USB mic for my desktop productions… it looks retro as all hell, it has GREAT frequency response for voiceover work, and was less than 100 bucks. It’s not a field mic, so I’m looking for a good one of those, too… (not necessarily USB though)
January 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am
[…] ___________________________________________________________________________________ bThanks Amara! See also the Bad Astronomer. […]
January 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am
spacewriter, I bought a Logitech USB mike. It’s not expensive, but I want something easy to try. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to take the plunge and do something better.
Now to figure out how to imporve the lighting in my office…
January 14th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
No no no, if you start doing video podcasts it’s no longer an office but a studio, you will need a camera man, a sound engineer, a boom operator (for the mike) and a producer.
January 14th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/
The pic is really impressiv and there is also a video on the side. only 3sec long, but really incredible!
January 14th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Nicely put together video, Phil, thank you, it adds a new dimension to your blog.
January 14th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
I love this site…and your video…mainly because it’s so easy to be educated here. I’m less than an amateur, I know 3 or 4 constellations and live in a cloud-encrusted light-polluted Great Lakes city. On the NASA sites, you’ve kind of gotta know your stuff in order to learn, but on BA, I feel like I’m in a class that I love and look forward to attending every day. I manage to learn something each day, and I’m generally talking enthusiastically about it to the family at the table. BA has linked me to places and things I never knew existed, and made me think deeply now and then - more deeply than I usually do anyway. (I don’t do that at work; they don’t pay me to think.) The video allowed me to finally meet my teacher, and that was cool. I guess we missed the comet due to relentless clouds, but I’ve learned a lot, so all is not lost. Loved the vid. Thanks.
January 15th, 2007 at 3:23 am
BEWARE!!!!! Slippery slope ahead! Sound work is much like astronomy. You can get started for a couple hundred bucks, but there is NO upper limit as to how much you can spend in search of that last little incremental improvement. I am a semi-retired soundman (mostly live sound reinforcement, but I’ve also done a few CDs). I have about $20K of equipment that i don’t use much any more, but I have an absolute KILLER stereo in my living room!
January 15th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Added note;
Microphones are a lot like eyepieces. You can get a fairly decent one for a few tens of dollars, but the really good ones are REALLY expensive!
January 15th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Very nice, but it must have taken a lot of time to put this together!
January 15th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
You’ll have to wait a few years to see it again? I think I saw on TV that it will be another 3,000 years before it returns. When is it returning, exactly?
January 15th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Should be availabe for the public around the clock…
January 25th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Phil!
Good job on the video blog thingy. I wish I had enough time to do more of that stuff! Now and then we include a small video with our podcast and put it on the front page of our site. We haven’t done one in a while so… this might kick me back into gear!