Here's my attempt at a pic of Comet Lulin. Not very impressive, but the best I could do without equipment better suited for astrophotography. There's some trailing (something to do with the ol' Earth doing that 825 mph rotation thing at this latitude) caused by the 25 second long exposure. The brightest object in the scene is Saturn and the little green smudge with the yellow arrow pointing to it is the comet. You can find better photos with a Google image search. Still pretty cool to see it - and hey, I got to listen to the hoots of a Great-horned Owl in the process . . .
Comet Lulin
Here's my attempt at a pic of Comet Lulin. Not very impressive, but the best I could do without equipment better suited for astrophotography. There's some trailing (something to do with the ol' Earth doing that 825 mph rotation thing at this latitude) caused by the 25 second long exposure. The brightest object in the scene is Saturn and the little green smudge with the yellow arrow pointing to it is the comet. You can find better photos with a Google image search. Still pretty cool to see it - and hey, I got to listen to the hoots of a Great-horned Owl in the process . . .
The photo's not too shabby! That must've been cool to see.
It was definitely neat to see - even in the binoculars it was possible to detect a hint of the green color. Most impressive one I've ever seen was Hale-Bopp back in 1997 - I actually have photos of it somewhere in my stuff. Would like to see another like that someday. . .
Hi,
I'm glad you posted this photo. I feel so much better about having been unable to locate the comet now. A local photographer's photo was in the News-Journal on Wed., after the comet's closest pass to Earth on Tues. night. The copy under the photo lead me to believe that the comet was easy to see with the naked eye and very good through binoculars. I looked and looked, both in town and out along Tomoka Farms Rd. No luck. Now I see why.
Earlier this week, someone posted a pair of Curlew Sandpipers on the Tropical Audubon Society web site that Angel Abreu then posted to Bird Brains. No doubt what they saw were a couple of examples of this week's mystery bird, Dunlin. I thought I'd post the answer over here instead of giving it away.
Too bad they misled you on the ability to see it. From what I read it was at the limit of naked eye visibility --if you had really good eyes and very dark skies. Given that it was in the southeastern sky, someplace like Canaveral National Seashore would probably be a better place to go to get away from the East Volusia "glow dome". Just for kicks I took a quick look and it appears the DB area has a "visual limiting magnitude" -- when the skies are absolutely clear on a perfect moonless night -- of between 5 and 5.5 (local light pollution hinders the ability to see an object that is fainter). Since the comet was closer to magnitude 6 (higher numbers are fainter), it would have been impossible to find without binoculars or a scope. And it was much smaller and less dramatic than I expected, too.
On the other topic, I got to wondering yesterday how that species got its name - did you know that "dun" is a color?