Chasing Comets

A comet is a ball of dust and ice—mostly dust—that has fallen into an orbit around the sun. Usually that orbit takes a long time to complete, and it sometimes happens that the comet disintegrates before completing a c iruit.. Hence, most people have only seen Halley's Comet once, if at all, because it only come around every 76 years or so. It sped by in 1986, and I saw it. It looked like every other comet, I suppose, a distant, fiery ball with a faint smudge of light tailing off into the darkness behind it. I don't remember exactly what Halley's comet looked like, but I referred to it in a poem I wrote at that time—a very bad poem—so I must have seen it. Right? 

Does it matter? Not much. Then again, those who have seen something rare and distinctive have a slight edge over those who haven't. And those who were at Woodstock? You never hear the end of it!

Hilary and I had a more memorable sighting in 1997, when were camping at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. It was a dark night; there are no towns within 30 miles of the desert site in any direction. And there is was: Comet Hale-Bopp. It has been referred to as the brightest comet of the twentieth century. I associated it at the time with the death of Laura Nyro earlier that year, a bright star zooming off into the cosmic night.

My best photo of Neowise

Just a few years ago Comet Neowise showed up. We drove down to Lake Louise State Park, a few miles from the Iowa Border, and went out into the night to the campground dumping station. From there, looking north across 30 miles of largely uninhabited farmland, we got an excellent view of the comet while standing in the dark next to a green dumpster. It had a nice long tail.

And just recently, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS showed up. It took its time swinging around the sun, offering plenty of opportunities for enthusiasts to see it, but it suffered from an unpronounceable name, and people began referring to it as simply A-3, which is easier to say but hardly glamorous or enticing.

One night recently we went out at sundown to Valley View Park, a long grassy sward near our house that points roughly west, to see what we could see. Nothing. Pondering the situation later, I determined that a better viewing site would be the east shore of Medicine Lake, a fifteen-minute drive away, where we could look out across the lake to the broad sweep of the western horizon. The next morning, leaving nothing to chance, we drove over there to familiarize ourselves with the route and choose a viewing spot. Hours later, just as the sun was going down, we returned.

A flock of geese was drifting a hundred yards off-shore, silhouetted in the golden sunset. Four or five people were already standing in the grass above the beach. One man—a high school geography teacher, we later learned—showed us a photo of the comet a friend of his had taken the previous night. Out across the south end of the lake Venus was shining brightly. That was a good sign, because the comet had been described as "just to the right of Venus."

There was a short squiggle of gold above the trees on the far side of the lake, just above the horizon. "Is that it?" one woman asked.

"No," I said, "You can see it's sort of broken and bent. That's a contrail."

"I'm glad I asked," she said. "I would have taken a picture and gone home."

A man came over to join us and soon conversation turned to the saw-whet owl everyone had seen in Sochaki Park last winter. But soon the man was telling stories about the random ducks his daughter had seen at a swamp nearby. We stepped down into the shadows on the beach to get away from the chatter. As it happened, the shadows also cut out most of the peripheral light from the parking lot behind us, making it easier to see objects in the darkening sky.

Another couple came down to the beach. They seemed to be speaking in some Slavic language, and I couldn't help asking them where they were from. "Ukraine" was the short reply. But we soon learned that she was from Georgia and he from the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine. She hastened to inform us that they arrived in the United States a quarter-century ago, as if to disassociate themselves from any misunderstanding. She made a random comment about Andropov—I don't remember the context—and I replied: "Don't forget Brezhnev and Kosygin."

"Good heavens. You remember Kosygin?" she almost shrieked. She seemed pleased.

They told us about a midnight excursion they'd taken recently to see the Northern Lights. "It was so colorful," the woman said. "White and green and even shades of red! We drove west for an hour to get away from the lights."

"Where did you actually stop to view the aurora," I asked.

"In a cemetery," she said.

"Did you see any ghosts?" I couldn't help asking. She laughed dismissively.

Back up on the grass, the geography teacher had spotted the comet.

"You see that house across the lake with the bright windows? It's up from there and a little to the left."

Soon everyone had found it. The trouble was, if you looked away, it wasn't easy to find it again. It was a faint glow with a smudge of a tail, and the tail was short. But it was definitely "cool." Now the task became to conceptualize what we were looking at.

The comet appeared to be streaking toward the sun with an exhaust trail behind it, like an image from a comic book, but we all knew the comet was actually on its way out of the solar system. The so-call "tail" was caused by solar radiation evaporating the comet's gases, causing it to emit dust and micro-particles. These particles almost invariably appear on the far side of the comet, regardless of the direction it's moving, due to the pressure exerted by the solar radiation.

But that's not a fun thing to think about. I prefer the Flash Gordon version.

As we were leaving the beach we passed a man fumbling with a camera fitted with an eyepiece and mounted on a tripod. The tripod was only four feet tall, and the man had to hunch over to look through the eyepiece. "I can see it with my binoculars," he said, "but I can't find it in the eyepiece." Frustrating.

Then again, all comets look pretty much alike. I will remember Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as the comet with a name I can't remember that we saw on the beach surrounded by a bunch of friendly strangers. They say it won't be back for 80,000 years.