Last night at around 11pm I went to a dark place. Not the dark place in my mind, but the dark place where I took the Aurora photos a few years back. This was another space hunt. Not for Aurora this time, but for comet C/2007 N3 Lulin.
The comet was just barely visible to the naked eye. I could see it a few times, but it was very very hard. When I looked at it through my binoculars it popped right out, so even if you can’t see it with your naked eye don’t let that discourage you from a similar excursion.
My only failure on this excursion is that I don’t have a telescope… or a motorized and tracking tripod. The photos would have been much better had I had that equipment, but it was still fun to take photos of it and see the tail pop out.
This was a chilling experience since the temperature had dropped below freezing, and it’s hard to operate a camera with gloves, so at the end of the excursion (about an hour later) I was very glad to start up my car and get some heat back in me.