Seeking the green comet

Comet Kahoutek ready for its close-up, 1973. Trust me, it never looked this good.

I must confess that when I saw Comet Kohoutek it was underwhelming. Kohoutek, aka C/1973 E1, was heralded with much fanfare as the Comet of the Century. Kohoutek turned out to be little more than a faint streak passing by Venus, low on the horizon at sunset. The underwhelming comet was so faint that it looked like a bug smear on the windscreen. 

During the dog days of summer of 1973, we trekked up the mountain and lined up along the Bolinas Ridge Road to pay homage to the celestial event. It was a good excuse as any to drink, or light up while staring directly into the setting sun. If you got lucky, you got to see the green flash at sunset. More like purple spots in front of your eyes from staring too long at the sun.

Kohoutek was nothing to crow about, its name, or rather the name of the astronomer (who was looking for a different comet), means rooster in Czech. Unfortunately Kohoutek became synonymous with spectacular disappointment.

The comet was thought to have originated somewhere in the Oort cloud. Whether it was of this solar system, or from the next galaxy over, no one knows, but Kahoutek was much smaller than Halley’s Comet, aka 1P/Halley, which looked like a bit of cotton lint on your lens. At least it was visible in the dark sky if you knew what to look for. 

One night I was driving up Guerneville Road from Santa Rosa after a poetry reading, I thought I had something in my eye. Then I noticed a bit of fluff was on my windscreen. Forgetting that it was Halley’s Comet, I pulled over to clean my window, looked up and then realized it was the comet. 

I thought of how my grandmother saw this same comet in Ireland, as it visits our galaxy our every 75–79 years. For a moment we were united in time. My grandmother said that Halley’s Comet was bright. A wonder to behold. Of course it was, there was less light pollution in those days, especially in Ireland.  Somehow, I don’t think I will be around for Halley’s fly-by visit in 2061.

Comet Hale-Bopp was the Big Bopper of comet sightings, April 1997

At least Comet Hale-Bopp C/1995 O1 put on a good show. One of the comet’s discoverers, a backyard amateur astronomer, Alan Hale was tracking the night sky from his driveway in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Tom Bopp was hanging out with friends in the Arizona desert and saw something fuzzy in the sky. He didn’t even own a telescope. Apropos of having two backyard discoverers, the Comet Hale-Bopp had two, maybe three tails. It didn’t know whether it was coming or going. But it was spectacular. 

We cheered it on that April foolish night in 1997 when it outshone itself. I was teaching poetry at Alexander Valley School and the night sky was stunning as the Milky Way wheeled its way across the sky. Even the moon didn’t put a dent in its beauty. The comet was probably first sighted in 2215 BC, in Egypt, dubbed the nhh-star, or the hairy star that accpmpanied the soul of the last pharaoh. The thing about comets is they’re like a bad penny, they’ll come around again. Hopefully the pharaohs will stay put.

Comet Hyakutake C/1996 B2, another backyard discovery in Japan, shone bright for about a week, but couldn’t hold a torch to the staying power (18 months) of that two-tailed Comet Hale-Bopp, the Big Bopper of the comet kingdom. That was the year we read poetry with Bill Moyers to a packed house in Sonoma. I was starstruck driving back to Forestville, I thought that was the epicenter of poetry. But the comet following me home was the brightest thing in the sky.

I guess none could surpass the most famous comet of antiquity, Caesaris astrum, or Sidus Iulium, dubbed Caesar’s deification star, it was considered to be the soul of Caesar, with its whopping eight tails. It was so bright that it appeared during the day right in the middle of the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris festival—right after Caesar was assasinated in 44 BC. Apparently Caesar’s grand-nephew, Augustus Caesar rode the tail of that comet to launch his own meteoric career, and issued a coin of Caesar with his rising star. 

Caesar's Comet coin, with an eight-rayed star and its flaming tail pointing upward

The court poets went nuts. Virgil wrote that the diefied star of Caesar has appeared to gladden the fields. "Never did fearsome comets so often blaze." Ovid went way over the top, and said Venus “took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars.” Calpurnius Siculus mutteted something under his breath and predicted that trouble was brewing in Rome. Ya think?

Who remembers the brief bright shining moment of Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 hanging off the Big Dipper? We may have been all collectively howling from Mill Valley to Mozambique at sunset, but I don’t think many of us were looking up into the night sky during the height of the COVID quarantine. We were afraid to go outside. Not even a plane in the sky. I think we all thought it was the end of the world as we knew it. But the Milky Way never looked so good.

Comet Neowise, July 20, 2020. But we were all in hiding with our heads in sand.

This time I didn’t even bother looking for the green comet with its nameless handle, Comet C/2022 A2 (Pan-STARRS) as I’ve been disappointed before by Kahoutek, K2, and co. Every comet I’ve ever seen hovers in the sky, it doesn’t stretch out and spread tail feathers across the sky like in the simulations. I couldn’t see the green comet when I looked for it, but when I was driving home the other night, I noticed something greenish flaring in the sky and I pulled over, thinking maybe I had seen the comet. 

Well, my eyes are no longer so good, so it was hard to tell. I got out a monocular lens to see if that would help. I found that my naked eye was more reliable than the monocular lens. I could see the Pleiades, Cygnus, not to mention the Gazelle Leaps. And there was some hanky-panky going on with Venus and Jupiter on the western horizon. I did not find the green comet with the lens, every breath I took sent the stars scattering across the sky like a a racked-up break and run in a game of pool. No dice, I guess it’s not easy being green.

But while I was busy searching the sky somewhere below Orion‘s kneecaps for the comet, suddenly to the north, a string of lights went galloping across the firmament like pearls. I was witnessing the spectacular SpaceX train headed east. I was both delighted and horrified at the same time, thinking of all the massive pollution and space debris that we have littered the sky as well as planet earth.

2/2/23 Mill Valley non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

2/19/23

I tried to look up a star map to see if I could find more information and the rather unhelpful SpaceX site says I couldn’t see them in the sky, but I sure did. There were a lot of them, and they just kept coming. They were going from west to east in a slight curve in the northern sky. It was very cool to see them, but the whole concept makes me very uneasy. And I can’t help but think how we’ve littered the sky with even more space debris  And then I think what an egotistical schmuck Elon Musk is. #Conflicted

Found it! Find StarLink

past) 6:50 pm, 9 Feb 2023

Starlink-70 (G5-3) (new), DIM (3.3) for 5 mins 

Look from WEST to NORTHEAST (details) 

Elevation (from horizon): start: 10°, max: 35°, end: 27°