Astronomy · Obs Report · 1st March 2006

Comet C/2006 A1 Pojmanski

Our intended target was Comet Pojmanski, a fast-moving comet that was first discovered in January 2006, by Crzegorz Pojmanski from a photo of the southern sky taken in Chile. The brightness was estimated to be around 5.5 but with the mornings now getting ever lighter and the comet low down near Capricorn it was never going to be easy.

For about half an hour we scanned the area with binoculars. With our finder-chart it was easy to pin-point the location and after a few minutes of trying a couple of us managed to identify a faint patch of fuzziness on the edge of vision in the place where the Comet was to be. Andy Ciavarella then took a few photos and used his planetarium software to positively identify the fuzz in the location we described.

So we successfully observed the target, although with the sun so close to rising and the sky light it was impossible to distinguish any detail.