A short report just to record that I caught my first comet with Stargirl tonight. Comet 168P Hergenrother officially goes down in history as my first comet bagged! It being a work night, I didn't have much time, and I'd been waiting several days for the clouds to clear. But tonight, the sky was gorgeous, so I grabbed Stargirl and my sketching supplies and went hunting.
From the information I had gathered, I thought perhaps I might find the comet on my own, without using the GoTo software on the hand controller. After about an hour of quartering the area in Pegasus where Heavens Above had it pinpointed, I saw a very, very tiny fuzzy spot. I had already been fooled by a couple of double stars, so I wasn't too hopeful when I changed from the 25mm EP to the 10mm, but for sure it was the comet, as fuzzy as you please next to the star points.
Although I had the sketching materials with me, I chose not to try to sketch the comet; partly because I was too excited and just didn't want to take my eye away from the eyepiece long enough, but also because I had not aligned the scope, therefore could not engage tracking, which of course meant, with such a high power EP that I had to manually track the comet constantly just to keep it in the EP.
And you know what? I'm comfortable with that. Because this is a hobby, and I can do it any way I choose. Perhaps another night this week I will go looking after aligning and attempt a sketch just for posterity. But if I don't, it will still be ok.
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I'm the Mom. Play nice. Don't make me come down there. The rules? The way to find out what they are is to break them.