58 replies to this topic

[Sam Danigelis]

Comet West. 1976 .That was a nice comet. Thats how they should look

Agreed.  I was in high school at the time.  We didn't even know about it.  My Dad woke us up before dawn one morning and there it was.  By far the brightest I've ever seen.

[Max Coe]

Mrkos for me. 1957. Well remembered because it was my brother's birth year. Easy naked eye from semi-rural SE Washington State.

[EricTheCat]

My first comet was 153P/Ikeya-Zhang in 2002.  The comet looked fantastic in my 11x70 binoculars.

 

Around that time I had just started doing film pics with a camera and a tripod.  The comet is in the far right side of this exposure from 4/9/2002.

 

[kfiscus]

IRAS-Araki-Alcock + Astroscan = great memories.

[RadioAstronomer]

Great topic! 

My first comet was C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp). My parents and I were on a road trip and my dad had read about a bright naked eye comet being visible in the sky. We stopped the car on some dirt road and saw the comet. I vividly remember seeing it as a bright object with a tiny tail near the horizon. I was just a kid, and that experience was so profound that I decided to dedicate my life to study and search for comets.

Kacper

[Exeligmos]

My first comet was 1P/Halley, at age 14. I first saw it with binoculars and a small scope as it was passing the Pleiades. I saw it again in late March 1986. My Dad and I took this photo:

 

 

For those who have seen comet 153P/Ikeya-Zhang but not Halley, they were very similar in brightness and appearance, at least when I saw both.

Edited by Exeligmos, 18 April 2024 - 11:34 AM.

[rutherfordt]

My first attempt at a comet was Kohoutek-- I never did succeed in finding it, but I was just starting out then so that's not a surprise.  The first successful comet sighting was Comet West (I was in high school like someone else in the thread has mentioned)-- I had read about it in Sky & Telescope so I knew it was coming.  Got up early and there it was-- the tail stretching up above the eastern horizon before the head had risen.  It was an amazing sight (those of you who saw it know exactly what I mean)!  I went inside the house and got my parents and my sister up to come out and look at it-- my dad still spoke of it many years later.

 

Tom

[holdt]

My first comet was also my first naked-eye comet: Kohoutek  - from the neighbor's field in rural New Hampshire.  My 6th grade science teacher had mentioned it in class and so I went looking.  The next day kids in class were dissing it because of the hype on tv.  I kept my mouth shut in class.  The image and awe of my first comet are still with me.

[TheBrianNebula]

Halley when I was 3 and my family lived in Wyoming. According to my mom, we drove to a dark spot at the continental divide and got out of the car and saw it, but it was too cold to look at it very long. I will always wonder if I really saw it. So far I'm on track to see the next apparition when I will get my next, possibly first, look at it. Last December it reached its aphelion, which I can take as an ominous midpoint of my life I guess. 

 

Ten years later I came of age with Hyakutake (which I remember seeing naked eye near Cassiopeia) and Hale-Bopp, which I saw from an Iowa farm in all its splendor. Let's not forget the Hubble pictures of the brown crop-circle shaped impact clouds on Jupiter left by Shoemaker-Levy 9.