Comet C/2001 A2 (LINEAR)

2001/6/29 This sketch made at the Grand Canyon, Arizona, at 4:05am local time (UT-7. Arizona is mountain time and doesn't observe daylight saving time. Very confusing!) 7x50 binoculars, FOV ~5 degree. Unfortunately twilight had started so I missed the Arizona dark sky! A fuzzy ball similar to a globular cluster, with no tail. The bright star at bottom is eta Ceti. I don't remember seeing the comet with naked eye, but again it's already twilight. The circle is not round because it was frozen-hand drawn! (just kidding... it's 40F at night and 100F at noon, not too bad.)

2001/6/30 The second day we were at the Bryce Canyon, Utah. I got up even earlier at 3 am local time (UT-6, Utah is mountain daylight saving time) and drove a few miles to avoid hotel lights. Somewhat disappointed, I found the sky not quite dark. Although there was no obvious light domes on horizon and the moon had set, I could easily see the road (or my hand), and the nw-n-ne sky was brighter than the rest (could it be the zodiac light or aurora?). Of course the sky was much darker than Wagman, and slightly better than Green county: the milky way was bright with dark bands, spanning from horizon to horizon; M31 was an easy naked eye object, but needed averted vision to discern shape. I also saw the dim Pinwheel galaxy M33 with binoculars, and 4 faint meteors.

Now comet C/2001 A2 was an easy naked eye object, similar to M31! In binoculars I could barely see a short tail pointing to the right (see sketch below, drawn at 3:50am). The nucleus was somewhat slightly elongated vertically. The comet had moved quite a bit. Notice the triangle of stars at bottom was beside the comet yesterday. At 3:55am a satellite glided pass the comet. Worth the effort to get up early three straight days! (the day before yesterday was for sunrise at the Grand Canyon)