Neowise Comet At 9:15 p.m. Wednesday NNW

17 July 2020
Story #994

R. Linda:

Two nights ago, O'Hare told me the space station was flying over and wanted to see it. Would I like to accompany him on the mosquito-infested back porch at sunset to watch it? Why for sure, I love getting bitten by those nasty buggers, so I went with him after liberally spraying meself with repellant for all the good it did.

We were swatting at our necks, arms, and legs (both foolishly dressed in shorts and T-shirts), and we almost missed the space station floating overhead. He pointed at it, "Look, look, Da up there, we almost missed it!"

Sure enough, the bluish glow of the bright space station was further afield than I would have liked, but I had been busy swatting and dancing around the deck. I turned around and looked behind me where the space station had come from. There in the sky was this reddish twinkling star, and it looked like it had a tail. I knew it wasn't Mars; it was too small, and Mars wasn't in that part of the sky.

"What be that?" I said, pointing behind me.

O'Hare had to tear his eyeballs away from the retreating space station to where I was pointing in the sky, and then he said, "Oh YEAH, that's the NEOWISE COMET! I almost forgot about THAT."

Well, he did forget about it. We would have been inside slathering ourselves with calamine lotion if I hadn't said anything.

I got the only pictures of the comet. His camera wouldn't function, or more like he couldn't see out of the viewer to find the comet (I tell ya, kids!). So I'm sharing them for want of anything else to send you since life is steadily dull, and it looks like it will be going that way for quite a while longer with this pandemic surge. Oi!

First shot

Second shot

Same as above but lightened up

Gabe
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