200 issues of OBSERVING

“I remember observing Comet 17P/Holmes with Patrick Moore and he said, “It’s just peculiar.” He was right, it was – it looked like a dinner plate!”

Pete: BBC Sky at Night Magazine started in the middle of 2005, quite a while ago in terms of astronomy. The more you think about it, the more events you realise there have been since that first issue.

Paul: I’d like to kick off with something recent: Comet NEOWISE, which was a spectacular naked-eye object seen during summer 2020. This was one of the best naked-eye comets since Hale-Bopp for UK skies because it was really well placed. It coincided with lockdown so we were all at home and the weather was really good. We had an unprecedented long spell of clear nights and I think NEOWISE was as good as Hale-Bopp in the 1990s. It was that long since Id seen a bright, naked- eye comet. I know we had McNaught – that was a good comet. You saw the tail of that from Selsey, Pete, but it didn’t actually climb high up. NEOWISE was the first one we’ve had for a while.

Yes, C/2006 P1 McNaught, that is going back a bit – I think that was 2007. That was impressive; I took a good photograph of it during daylight. It went into a spectacular outburst when it passed into the southern skies and the tail exhibited those striations you get, called synchronic bands. Judging by some of the stars I could see in the wonderful pictures taken from the Southern Hemisphere, I figured out that I might also be able see some of the bands from the Northern Hemisphere. I went down to the beach