9 January 2007

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong. Arthur C. Clarke

In a news article on CNN they are saying something I have been saying all along:

We are looking for earth-like life in outer space and wouldn't recognize extraterrestrial live if we found it - or if it found us.

Did NASA accidentally kill life on Mars?

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Observing Location	Corona Yards, Flushing, Queens, NY Lat.: 40.75332433190134, Long.: -73.84482711553574 I got off the train at 111 St and walked down to the NY Hall of Science where my meeting is later tonight, but the trees and buildings are too high there to see the horizon. I looped around through the old World's Fair hoping to find a better vantage point. It looked like the best I could do in the area was the pedestrian bridge from the Willets Point/Shea Stadium subway station over the Corona MTA rail yards to the Worlds Fair grounds, now Flushing Meadow Park.
Observational Period	1640-1730 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Broken Clouds Temperature 43°F Wind 18 MPH gusting to 23 MPH Humidity Moderate Feels Like Very Cool The weather was not great tonight, but it was good enough. And I almost have up on it when I saw the sky when I got to Queens. Transparency Fair Seeing I
Instruments	Brunton 8x21 compact binocular - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target C/2006 P1 (McNaught) Constellation Aql Category Comets/Asteroids/Meteors Time yyyymmdd.hhmm 20070109.1705 EST Comments I found Venus fairly quickly but had to search a while longer for the comet which was coming and going in the low clouds. After I found the comet and landmarked it I was able to see it naked-eye. This is the first comet that I have seen that had an unmistakable tail. The head was bright in the binocular and spraying away from it in a direction to the upper right away from the Sun were multiple streamers of fainter light. It looked to me like the outside streamers were the longest and that there appeared to be two or more shorter ones between them. I am not good at this stuff but based on the FoV marked on my binocular I would estimate the tail to be about 0.75° in length. Except for one occasion when some darker clouds intervened, I was able to follow the comet until it set in to the trees on the horizon. At that time I was having trouble seeing it naked-eye and it looked orange in the binocular.