Yes! What an awesome sight! Finally we got a break between snow storms and
had clear skies the last two nights in Boulder, the two nights Hyakutake
was predicted to be at maximum apparent brightness. I went up into the
Indian Peaks Wilderness area to 3350 meters (11,000 feet) elevation, 8 km
from the Continental Divide, to escape the lights from the flatlands. By
1 am the moon had set over the Arapahoe Peaks to the west. Hyakutake's
tail stretched all the way from Polaris into the pail of the Big Dipper.
I used a 3 1/2-inch Questar, binoculars, and my visual cortex. I did
some 200-mm photography. Today a cloud cover is developing again over
the mountains. I expect some of you are dealing with cloud cover from
the storm front that left here two days ago headed east.
Michael Thomason, Director of Learning Laboratories
University of Colorado, Department of Physics Box 390, Boulder CO 80309-0390
MWF 303 492-7117 TTh 303 492-8313 Fax 303 492-3352
thomason@aeinstein.colorado.edu http://physics.colorado.edu