Location: home,
After week of clouds the sky cleared up yesterday. There were still some high clouds to the south, but there was a chance I could see the C/2021 A1 (Leonard) comet before it goes for good. I knew it would be at about the same altitude as Venus after sunset, so if I see Venus, I should be able to see the comet.
I set with Orion 15x70 binos at the highest point on the property (second floor patio) right after sunset ~17:00 and waited. Soon Venus appeared and shown sharp small crescent in binos. I noticed from Sky Safari that Mercury supposes to be ~6 degrees below, but it was not visible yet.
I waited and at 17:15 Jupiter became visible naked eye. Binos has shown disk and two moons on one side. Five minutes later Saturn appeared. Binos has shown smaller disk with two ears. Time to scan for the comet. Nope, nothing yet, not even the reference stars.
I kept scanning the sky and at 17:25 spotted Mercury. It had appearance of a small yellow disk, although I don’t believe 15x was enough to resolve it.
I kept scanning the sky around the comet location. Eventually, I have spotted the brighter reference star – Gamma Gruis, mag 3.0. The comet should be ~8 degrees to the right, but nothing yet.
17:40. I have spotted second reference star Epsilon Microscopii, Mag 4.71. The comet with predicted mag 5 to 6 should be about 2 degrees below and slightly left. I moved binoculars and saw it! It looked like a large globular cluster with brighter nucleus and fainter near round
17:50. I hoped that as sky was getting darker, I would resolve more details, but the comet was also getting lower into the clouds hanging near the horizon, so the view was getting worse.
Still, I felt like I won a lottery.
From today on we are getting clouds and more rain, and who knows where the comet will be a week from now.
