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Comet (Comet, est. mag 0.4, est. to be in Perseus, Est. RaDec 4h18mn +30)
Observer: Haldun "Hal" I. Menali (e-mail: halme@kocbank.com.tr, web: http://www.kocbank.com.tr)
Instrument: 80-cm binoculars Location: near Kas, Antalya, Turkey
Light pollution: light Transparency: good Seeing: good
Time: Thu Apr 24 18:10:00 1997 UT Obs. no.: 124
Together with my wife Gamze, we try to observe C/Hale-Bopp on each clear night from mostly light polluted skies of Istanbul. This year we could see the Comet from early March to end of April, for 21 days in total. Here we would like to share with you our best sighting of the Comet from a southern coastal town of Turkey at 36 deg latitude on April 24th. There was literally no light pollution, except headlights of passing cars nearby. It was a fantastic sight to remember. The comet hung down in the sky like a brilliant diamond! It was so huge and bright that, I am sure it should have cast some shadow. No words can describe the beautifully curved tail and its unthinkable length. It went maybe more than 6 deg visible in our 12x80 binocs. Eastern side of the tail was sharply defined, while western side was diffused and can not be seen clearly. Eastern side was brighter than the western side. The dust tail was spread between PA 355 deg and 60 deg. The dust tail was reaching at least 2 deg width at its widest part. With averted vision we could see the beginning of the gas tail as well to the east of the dust tail. The pseudo nucleus was really too bright and showed a disc-like structure, like planets. We spotted an antitail to our surprise just south of the coma, in triangular shape of 15' long from tip to base, at PA 240 deg.
Comet (Comet, est. mag 10.3, est. to be in Cancer, Est. RaDec 8h52mn +20)
Observer: Haldun "Hal" I. Menali (e-mail: halme@kocbank.com.tr, web: http://www.kocbank.com.tr)
Instrument: 41/4-inch Dobsonian reflector Location: Saklkent, Antalya, Turkey
Light pollution: moderate Transparency: good Seeing: good
Time: Tue Apr 22 22:10:00 1997 UT Obs. no.: 126
That night we observed P/81 Wild 2 at Saklkent, a mountain ski resort area of 1900 meters altitude in Taurus mountains in southern Turkey. The site is 50 km away to nearest city and 7 km to the Turkish National Optical Observatory at 2485 meters altitude. Unfortunately the sky background was bright because of one-day-before-full Moon. Because of some air turbulence, the comet was just seen with averted vision and at high magnification. It shone shyly among the stars of Cancer and showed no further detail. We could detect its coma diameter as 1.5 arc minute with a DC of 2.
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