# Got my first look at comet NEAT last night **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 19, 2004, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971 "2004-05-19T14:55:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ForgottenLore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5e9695/32.png) [@ForgottenLore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForgottenLore)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/1 "2004-05-19T14:55:12Z")
…with my brand new telescope. Viewing from my house isn’t great (we’re a little too close to the city to get a really dark sky) so at 48X it was a fuzzy patch. At 133X it was a larger fuzzy patch. Whoopee, right? It was a big deal to me, though, because it is the first object not visible to the naked eye that I located without the help of the starfinder gizmo that came with the telescope. Ooooh, I feel like such a big shot! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/2 "2004-05-19T16:24:57Z")
I finally got a chance to look at it last week, after it rose high enough in the sky. It’s visible in 10x binoculars as … a fuzzy blob. I convinced myself that I could just about see it as a naked eye object, although it was right on the edge of visibility in my not-very-dark neighborhood. I just bought some big honking 15x70 binoculars, specifically for astronomy, so I’m hoping it’s clear tonight. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/3 "2004-05-19T19:56:54Z")
On Sunday night, May 16, we were driving east across Illinois from St. Louis. We saw a brilliant falling light in the eastern sky. I don’t know what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/4 "2004-05-19T21:06:26Z")
Well, it wasn’t a comet. Likely a meteor or fireball. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/5 "2004-05-19T23:45:06Z")
Oooh, comets! I spent most of my first 28 years eagerly anticipating the passage of Halley’s Comet in 1986. As luck would have it, it was so dim you had to go to the desert to see it, and then it was only dimly visible. But there was another comet that appeared somewhere around 1997, I forget exactly when. It was probably magnitude 2 or 3 in brightness; I couldn’t have seen it from my home in L.A., but as it happened we were at West Bend Beach, near Malibu, where the sky is much darker. I saw a comet. It was a memorable event in my life. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/6 "2004-05-20T00:25:57Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > Oooh, comets! > > I spent most of my first 28 years eagerly anticipating the passage of Halley’s Comet in 1986. As luck would have it, it was so dim you had to go to the desert to see it, and then it was only dimly visible. But there was another comet that appeared somewhere around 1997, I forget exactly when. It was probably magnitude 2 or 3 in brightness; I couldn’t have seen it from my home in L.A., but as it happened we were at West Bend Beach, near Malibu, where the sky is much darker. > > I saw a comet. > > It was a memorable event in my life. [Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake](http://www.uc.edu/geology/geologylist/cometphotos.html) , depending on whether it was a larger, fuzzy blob or a smaller, more sharply defined comet with a very obvious tail. '96-97 was a good year for comets. ---
**Author:** ![ForgottenLore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5e9695/32.png) [@ForgottenLore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForgottenLore)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/7 "2004-05-20T16:25:39Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > '96-97 was a good year for comets. I’d have to say the nineties in general, what with [comet Shoemaker-Levy-9](http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/) in '94. '04 is shaping up pretty good, too; [three comets](http://www.space.com/spacewatch/comet_update_040416.html) already this year, and Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, and Venus all high in the early evening sky. Backyard astronomers never had it so good! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/got-my-first-look-at-comet-neat-last-night/245971/8 "2004-05-20T16:32:23Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > [Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake](http://www.uc.edu/geology/geologylist/cometphotos.html) , depending on whether it was a larger, fuzzy blob or a smaller, more sharply defined comet with a very obvious tail. '96-97 was a good year for comets. It must have been Hyakutake then, because it had a well-defined tail. When I saw it, it was directly overhead and the tail was fairly long.