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#11
Yes mate looks like I just missed it from this Pictures: Comet Pan-STARRS Debuts in Southern Hemisphere that telescope is about 65 kms away from me and I would have seen it easy from the top of the hill out of town. Mind you we have had some bad weather just lately maybe I would have been out of luck anyway:)IC, I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but now that PANSTARRS is viewable in the Northern hemisphere it is no longer visible in the South. Your time was from the Holidays last year to the end of February.
For more on this scroll down to right before the comments section:Jan. 12, 2013: Comet falling behind predictions? Now that Comet PanSTARRS is out of conjunction with the Sun for Southern Hemisphere observers,
Source: Updates on Comet PanSTARRS - SkyTel Beyond the Page - SkyandTelescope.com
I'll go take a look this evening anyhow just in case it might have gone into reverse by mistake you know what those auto transmissions are like eh??
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, so was hitchhiking and got a ride with a Blacksmith, yep a real one wanting to relocate in the Mountains of Colorado. He was drunk, and still drinking (warm PBR, funny how you remember details like that). Picked me up in eastern Kansas a little west of K.C. in the late, late afternoon. On the radio, I remember hearing that tonight was the peak night of the Perseid meteor shower that year and was predicted to be one of the best ever for whatever reason (but there was a reason). Well, I was mostly worried that this guy would kill us because the farther west we got the drunker he became. I finally got him to stop at a rest area somewhere in west Kansas and he immediately passed out over the steering wheel. And then.......... then I took my sleeping bag and went to lay out on a picnic table because I was exhausted. From hitchhiking, from stress/worry, and lol, hunger as I had been living on very short rations for about a week. And then, my goodness the sky was alive! I mean ALIVE with meteorites! I tried counting them but they were falling too fast for that! Hundreds if not thousands..... right there..... in front of me. Mostly the small white streaks, but inter-spread with larger red trails. The most amazing show I'd ever seen and it remains so to this day. While there was no huge fireballs there were literally more than you could take in. I sat there wrapped up in my sleeping bag until it started to get light and still couldn't sleep because of the immensity of what I was seeing and saw. I wanted to wake everyone up to look at this marvelous, once in a lifetime show that they were missing but restrained myself. I've been a astronomy buff to this day because of what I witnessed that night and wouldn't trade the memory of it for anything. I've seen bigger meteors since, and two major fireballs (the one in S.C. I mentioned and another in the Everglades) but never anything even close to that storm of lights from the sky. Have owned telescopes, mostly refractors but one (my pride and joy) 8 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain that I bought as a gift to myself,for the best night I ever had in the carnival business (up to that time). The things I saw through that (the Pleiades "up close"!!!!) were/are fantastic, but nothing will ever replace the joy and wonder I got from my naked eye view of the sky falling down in western Kansas that night.
