Opportunity Stalking

C/2007 N3 Lulin on February 25th, 2009
Sketch and Details by Jeff Young

After striking out for nearly a week running, a comment on one of the Irish boards got me to thinking. The gentleman was describing driving home and pulling over to get the binos out when a partial clearing presented itself. It finally dawned on me that I needed a more opportunistic approach to deal with my constant cloud cover. Checking two or three times a night to see if it was clear out wasn’t doing the job.

So I duly set up my p-mount & binos in a south-facing window, pulled up a chair, set my sketching stuff on the window cill, and sat down to wait.

Over the next hour and a half I was rewarded with 3 spells of pretty good clarity and 4 or 5 spells viewing through high thin clouds. Lulin was easy naked eye during the clarity (although it appeared stellar — no coma visible), and I’d estimate its brightness at better than mag 5.

I was able to work on some of the brighter field stars even through the high clouds, although I never got enough clear spells to plot all the dimmer ones (I worked mostly on the comet itself during them). The time listed on the sketch is when I plotted the comet’s position relative to the field stars. I was working on the sketch from about 23:20 to 0:10.

C/2007 N3 Lulin

Comet (currently in Leo)

Sketched Feb 25, 2009 from County Louth, Ireland,

as viewed through Nikon 18×70 binoculars; NELM 5

Daler-Rowney HB Graphic pencil on white cartridge paper. Scanned and inverted in Photoshop.

Cheers,

— Jeff.