To Catch a Comet

By John Reed

I drove into John Fitzgerald's driveway the evening of May 8th expecting another casual and relaxing observing session in John’s front yard.  John already had his scope set up with the business end pointed toward the northeast.  He promptly asked us what we thought about the object he was looking at in Draco, adding that the charts didn’t show anything in that region.  I looked into his view finder and saw a fairly bright, diffuse object.  It looked like an out of place nebula.  I asked for the low power eyepiece and again looked through the 8  inch.  There was a tiny nucleus surrounded by a halo of faint light.  My gosh, I thought, a comet!

It had been almost five years since the last time I had seen a comet naked eye (yes we saw it with the unaided eye after we knew where to look), that being the now famous Comet West.  Eliot and John ran into the house, leaving me out under the stars with the celestial visitor.  They said they would check Sky & Telescope to see if any comets should be visible.  I looked at it and wondered if by some crazy chance we were the first.  It would be our comet!  I had heard nothing on the radio, nothing had been in the papers.  And it was naked eye!

I finally joined them in the house and asked what they had found.  They said it was not even mentioned.  My heart skipped a beat.  We immediately began talking excitedly about phoning it in -- claiming our comet.  We first called several club members, thinking maybe they would know something.  None of them did.  We then dug out the information on declaring a new comet.  It seemed one usually sent a Western Union Telegram to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Our last call before doing this was to club member Paul McBride in Green Forest, mainly to make sure we were going about all this correctly.  Eliot spoke and before he could utter a word Paul said "I've already seen it.  I phoned it in.  It was discovered ten days ago." Our sprits fell, but at least we knew.

We have since photographed it many times, hoping to see more of the elusive tail in time exposures than we could in the telescope.  As of the writing of this newsletter it is making it's closest approach to earth.  So fast!  I don't know if I will get another chance to see it or not.  I can only hope.

Ed Note: The comet is named IRAS-Asaki-Alcock after its three discoverers.  One was a machine, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite; the other two were human amateur astronomers, Genichi Asaki and G.E.D.  Alcock.