I had made a list of couple new comets to be observed with the 8" scope. The
evening ones were all clouded out, and now since it was a 17.5" there was no
fear of finding anything. I star-hopped to the region from star Pi Sagi to the
precise location in Sagittarius as in finder chart. After staring...nothing
there!! Akarsh and Me could not see anything, as we were about to give up. But
then Akarsh, my observing partner, an experienced one, exclaimed as whenever he
finds something incredibly faint, and he confirmed it (and his astonishment at
finding such a faintie is for limited objects). I looked at the field and this
object was so faint that, say with 30 seconds of staring, you could see it for
only 5 seconds! It was extremely diffuse with a roundish coma (~5 arcminutes),
which got brighter at moments.
Why was it so faint at reported 11th mag (by Juan Jose Gonzalez of Spain), is a
surprise to us! Is it only because of the extreme diffuseness? However, when I
wrote generally to Alan Hale, he reported it at 13th mag. Wow a 13th mag diffuse
comet! It would have been better to have checked the field in Digitized Sky
Survey (DSS) later on. This is a comet which was randomly picked and observed.
BACK to Comets page.