Its dead Jim. The comet of the century was gobbled up by the sun. There will be no spectacular comet event. I can hang up my binoculars, telescopes, and my high hopes for an awesome comet gracing the Novemeber skies. For a guy like me this is an extreme disappointment.
Oh well… Maybe next time.
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Ah how sad. It was eaten by the sun?
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Yeah, it was known that its trajectory would be very close to the sun, all hopes were that it would survive, and be very active. Those hopes have been dashed.
This morning there is word that a small part of the comet may have survived, too early to tell if it will amount to anything, the surviving remnant probably won’t have enough outgassing material to be very interesting. This has proven to be one tough cookie to predict.
I swear I am bummed out over this to a degree I was not expecting, lol. It’s like the Grinch stole x-mas.
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I participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge each week and I came across this post shortly after reading yours and I thought it might interest you.
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That was an interesting link. As an avid amateur astronomer I have more telescopes and binoculars than I have kids, and I’m in my second marriage, with two kids from the 1st one, and four more as a result of the second one. Only 2 still in the house with us, but the point I am trying to get to is… I have an ED 80 APO that takes nice pics, and I want terribly to get out with it and get invovlved with wildlife and astro photgraphy, just haven’t made it a priority. Too much crap to do and too little time to devote the wants, instead of the needs.
We are under the gun right now from a bad ass ice storm, last time we had .25 inch of ice this place looked like a hurricane came through. We are expecting maybe as much as .5 to .75 inch of ice this time. I may be without power till spring.
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Sounds like you have a great assortment of gear, and little time! I hope It includes something small and solar for your electronics, if not a generator for the house. Good luck.
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I have some decent visual gear, the ED 80 would make an ok astro photo rig, but the CG-5 GT may not be up to astro photo standards. It might do with the ED 80, but not the C-8. The 12.5 Discovery is out of the question. I know for sure the ED 80 takes good terrestrial telephoto shots, and I live very close to the Tn. river where there is all kinds of wildlife activity, I just haven’t made it work…yet.
The ice storm was way over hyped, we were I would guess around another 1/16 to an 1/8 inch from a disaster. We had probably 150 gallons of non potable water in buckets and 3 tubs, and 20 gallons of drinking water on hand. I had dragged out my camp stoves and made sure they worked. Had to move the 30 ft. camper because it sits next to a leaning wild cherry, it was sloppy muddy good thing the truck is 4WD. Made sure all the flashlights were working, got lamp oil for the lamps, propane and camp fuel for the camp stoves. I have an inverter that will make enough electricity to keep the tv on and a small light going with a 2 battery pack to run from, then we can hook it to the car when needed. The car has a small engine and can idle forever with a full tank of gas. The kids got out of school for a couple of days…then complained when there was no disaster. I am still trying to get them to understand it was a good thing. We had fun prepping though, had the kids doing all kinds of stuff to help, and they pitched in without complaint. So it was a good trial run. Oh yeah, we have a fireplace an a cord of wood on stanby too.
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Wow, you are REALLY prepared for disasters, that was an impressive dry run, and I’m glad it only ended up bring a dry run. I hate it when impending weather gets overhyped – you can almost see some weather personalitites salivating at the prospect of huge snows here at times. Your photo gear has mine beat hands-down. For my comet and meteor shots, I just used a regular 35mm Konica, nothing astrophotography-grade, so no cool photos of the Milky Way. But then gain, there’s so much light pollution here even good gear couldn’t get good Milky Way photo. Sigh.
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When you experience an ice storm of the magnitude we had here back in the winter of 93-94 you take the threat seriously. 🙂 Power was out here at my place for 2 weeks. Trees were down everywhere. I had to take a chain saw and clear the road down my property line so my neighbors could get in and out. Then together we cut a path to the highway.
That one was unannounced. I woke up that morn to the sound of craack! boom! First time I thought no biggie there are trees in the woods, limbs fall all the time. And dozed off again. Then after several more craack! Booms! I was like “wtf?” Got up, made coffee and looked out to an ice covered nightmare. I put on some coveralls and went out with a coffee in hand and was awestruck. Then I heard a low rumble and a huge white oak 40 ft away just fell over. Thus answering the silly philosophy question of whether or not a tree makes a sound when it falls in the woods. Yes, yes it does.
Anyway, we have 2 things that strike in this region that make me take notice…ice storms, and tornadoes.
As far as equipment, you certainly do excellent work with what you have. I can’t say the same. I want to, time and $ conundrum, when I have time $ is short, when I have the $ time is short. I need a fix for that, I think it’s called dedication.
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You are so right about the time-money conundrum. It is exactly the same for me!
That ice storm sounds like an awesome thing, an awesome show of the force of nature and an awesome show of cooperation amongst you and neighbors to set things right afterwards. It is so sad for the trees, yet there can be an awful beauty when the sun plays on glazed branches. Fingers crossed your winter this year will be gentle.
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Thanks for sharing my link here, I just stumbled across it!
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fojap deserves the credit! Nice blog btw. Thanks for stopping in.
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You’re welcome, and thanks for the kind words.
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