Three Planet Night & a Northern Comet
by Bill Gucfa & Jim Hendrickson
We opened Seagrave Observatory at 8:00 p.m. this night, warranted by the time change and later setting Sun.
Visitors had already started arriving, drawn by the spectacle of Venus and Jupiter only four degrees apart in a thinly clouded sky.
Before going into the observatory we had cameras set up to record the planets and explained our imaging procedures, to the delight of the small group of public who had gathered so far. This was a pleasant bonus before observing with the Clark.
In the observatory, viewers were treated to Venus at high magnification and amazed at its nearly half phase, having never witnessed anything like this before. It’s always pleasing to hear the excitement in the voices of parents and their children both, when they look into the eyepiece for the first time!
We later found comet Garradd after a lengthy hunt and difficulty positioning the telescope, due to the comet’s location in Draco, and closeness to the celestial pole. The search was worth the effort as fading Garradd showed itself a worthy target, looking like a large globular cluster shining at 8th magnitude.
B. Gucfa
