C* 1933, Comet Hyakutake, (un)tether, green flash

Walter Nissen (dk058@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Mon, 11 Mar 1996 08:44:50 -0500

Well, I had a really lousy night of observing from -81.8637, 41.3735. 
Among a number of other observations under partly cloudy conditions, I 
caught a spectacular pass of C* 1933, flashing a bit more regularly than 
usual; saw Comet Hyakutake for the second night in a row (the previous 
night I had to use 11x80 binoculars with the Moon only 6 degrees away), at 
about 5th mag, the coma still visible thru light cloud, a suggestion of a 
tail maybe (when not covered by cloud), in a day or so, best time to catch 
it will be at Moonrise, looks good for reaching magnitude 0 directly 
overhead in a dark sky 10 or 12 days from now; caught the (un)tether 
straight as could be, ghostly, 1.1 degrees long, vertical, crossing zeta2 
Sco (for some reason zeta2 is the bright one) at 960311 104006.50 
(somebody ought to do an analysis of elsets from Mike, Alan, Gary Morris, 
and OIG to find out who won the derby, my thanks to all; also thanks to 
Jay Respler for including the elset and his timing), not stroboscopic like 
one observation of the previous long tether, no dot seen; then finished 
off with orange glow and the green flash over a land horizon at Sunrise. 
If this bad luck continues, I guess suicide is next.                    8-> 
 
Cheers. 
 
Walter Nissen                   dk058@cleveland.freenet.edu

---

Astronomy is lights in the sky.