Here we go again, another astronomical disappointment.
First it was Halley’s Smudge. After I waited most of my life to see the cometary spectacle, total washout. The closest I managed to come was a sort of smudgy blob on a powerful telescope.
Now its the Venus Transit. Yeah, I know it was supposed to be better in Europe, but ne’ertheless we were told that it’d still be visible at sunrise here. So I actually dragged my aging carcass out of bed two hours early to sit vigil on the sunrise. And as the sun rose, clearly visible was NOTHING!!! Just a perfect red orb with nothing at all out of the ordinary (or so I assume - normally my seeing a sunrise meant I hadn’t been to bed yet).
The abotive MILLENIUM
Halley’s Smudge
The non-fracture of the San Andreas’ Fault
and now no Venus
I was real disappointed by Halley’s but then we had another one in the mid-90s that was way better than anyone thought. Can’t remember which one it was called, but I know what you mean. My brother and I use to calculate how many years to go to see Halley’s (this in the early 60s) and I imagined seeing it even during the day as had been claimed in previous go-round.
Also in the early 90s was a supposedly best meteor shower ever. So we bundled up, drove out to a dark spot and lay there for a few hours, only to see but a few of 'em.
But it was in the sky when I met Arleen. We would go walking, and there it was, a benevolent wanderer from afar, casting a ray of celestial magic in our direction. Very fond memories of that comet.
Yeah, I was hoping to get a look at it this morning, but it was foggy here.
The good comet was Hale-Bopp. I bought a telescope for it and went out into the Blue Ridge, but it was cloudy the night I was out there. I did get a couple of good views closer to home (more background), but never got a decent pic. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t gotten a decent pic of anything through the telescope, including the moon. I’m obviously missing something.
The other BIG disappointment was Kouhoutek. We were told (in 8th grade science, admittedly) that the tail might stretch 1/3 of the was across the sky. At its peak it was about as bright as Mars.
Yes, we keep expecting something from the Gods and Godesses;
to send us a heavenly vision…and they just don’t come now-a-days.
It reminds me of an early Star Trek episode when all the Greek “gods”
just spread themselves thin and vanished in the wind cause the
people didn’t need them any more.
Maybe we’ve seen so much science-fiction stories, that even a
Super-nova of a star won’t effect us.
Lets hope we are as calm if aliens ever do land!..
“oh, hi, you’re from where, o.k., well, I’m busy now and must run,
bye”.
(Yes, I stood outside at 2 a.m. a few years back watching shooting stars too!
Lolly
Yeah, I remember Kohoutek because I was in India at the time. Couldn’t barely see it there either.
So I guess Hale Bopp is the one I do remember. That was awesome because we were having very clear weather and we had it, night after night. That was magical to me, as Jerry says.
Susan, and Lolly, you do put things in perspective. If we can see the night sky at all, it’s a thing of beauty, and we should feel lucky. I can’t see it at all most of the time, between haze, light pollution and trees (which are their own blessing, at least when I get the AC bill). But whenever I’m somewhere that it’s visible, I marvel.
The northern lights are way cool. I haven’t seen them in 20 years, but I did climb the hill on my college campus to see them. Whenever the leonid meteor storm comes on a weekend, I head on out somewhere to view them. It’s not often that I see anything, but it happens.
Hale-Bopp was indeed a good display. I saw it near Zion National Park in dark skies while journeying from Seattle to Tucson. Binoculars showed it well, and a good telescope used later at home showed its multiple gas shells. -Kind of reminded me of one of Arthur C. Clarkes’s books except for my lack of a glamorous earthling starlet and the promise of beaucoup diamonds.
The best views were in the middle east, I understand.
Back in the late 70s during my first public school teaching job, there was a beautiful comet with two tails, and a 99% eclipse of the sun. I borrowed the reflector telescope from the school and it would fill the entire field of view. It was much bigger than Hale-Bopp.
My Mom saw the 1910 Halley comet (she was 10) and it covered the entire sky from horizon to horizon for a couple of nights, she said.
I had my science class make pinhole camera viewboxes to view it. They didn’t get any time out of class, though, because the eclipse was on the weekend.
