The Fingerprint of God

Observer: Tom Campbell
Location: Iola, Kansas (Long: 95°24'W Lat: 37°55'N)
Equipment: Simmons 10x50WA
Time: 9:00pm - 9:30pm CDT (02:00-02:30 UT)
Transparency: Clear (8/10)
Seeing: Stable (8/10)
Weather: Temperatures in the upper 60s. There was a little breeze.



Tonight, it was about 9:00pm CDT when I got home, but I wanted to try and
spot Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT). I grabbed my binoculars for a quick peek. It's
low enough in the sky to be a difficult target for me, and I actually had to
sneak into my east neighbor's yard (she doesn't mind) for it to appear over
our western neighbor's 2-story house.

Through binoculars, Comet NEAT appeared as a wide oval smudge, reminding me
of a fingerprint. The bright coma was nearly in the center. The background
sky was still too bright to make out any real detail in my binoculars.

While letting my brother Terry look at the comet through my binoculars, I
just casually scanned the sky. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glint
appear towards Virgo. Looking, I saw what appeared to be a fairly bright
satellite going nearly parallel with the eastern horizon. It started fading,
and I just started to tell my brother about the satellite when it suddenly
erupted into a bright orange streak! It was a meteor! A second later, it was
gone, but that was the first meteor that I remember seeing fade and then
brighten again.

As I was telling Terry about what I had just seen, another glint caught my
eye overhead. This time, it was a satellite, reflecting the Sun for a few
seconds before quickly fading to become barely visible.

After Terry had satisfied himself with his view of the comet, I took the
binoculars and aimed them at Jupiter. Tonight, three of the moons were far
enough away from the glare of the gas giant to detect. Ganymede and Europa
were barely visible on the eastern side of the planet, and I could see
Callisto on the western side.

After that, I just played around for a while with the binoculars, making
sweeps of various parts of the sky and taking advantage of the comfortable
temperature. I saw Corvus peeking over some treetops in the south, so I used
my binoculars and followed my recently-discovered "Sombrero Highway" from
Gamma Corvi to M104 (The Sombrero galaxy), which appeared as a faint, oblong
smudge. Other objects I viewed included Berenice's Hair (Mel 111), M44 (The
Beehive cluster), M67, and M35.