The Great Christmas Comet of 2011, 2011 W3 (Lovejoy) Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=.../birthday_comet

Possible very bright sungrazing comet coming mid December - Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

Information in the link above.

[Mongo]

Another report on the comet by Geoff Dudley (comet-ml post #19039):

I went to The Briars (Mornington Peninsula AS HQ) down at Mt Martha yesterday morning 22Dec11, got there around 0340.

Greeting me were Rod Brackenridge and Greg Walton. Greg had setup 3 binocular chairs, an 8" SCT and 3 SLR cameras. I arrived prior to the comet rising so a very pleasant and comfortable time was had by all just generally admiring the sky, (which was beautiful and clear almost to the SE horizon)with 10 x 80's when at 0410 Greg said, "Someone's got a searchlight on over towards Hastings". He was right except for the fact that the beam was curved slightly northwards. I'd never heard of a curved searchlight beam and it wasn't moving about so it was then that we realised that it was the comet. It was easily visible, we didn't need binos. I stuck my hand out at arm's length and found that it just covered the comet so I guess the length was about 15-20 deg. We couldn't see a head, it may have been too low in the atmosphere. I had a look for comparison stars and took a punt on it being around mag 2 or 3. Very hard to work out with accuracy as the Sun was rising. The comet stayed visible even thru astronomical twilight.

Finally at 0444 we lost it.

Greg took lots of photos as his cameras were set to auto expose for around 10 secs each. He got a nice shot of the tail with a 120mm lens and when zoomed in clearly showed the split. It was a WOW moment.

Merry Xmas to all!

-- Geoff Dudley

One of the photos mentioned above: