Comet Holmes 3

The comet is now moving up towards Mirfak (Alp Per). It is also growing larger. I estimate it filled a quarter of the 1 deg field I get with my 25mm eyepiece making it some 15 arcminutes across. I confess that the bright object inside the comet that I took to be a star in my previous post was actually the comet itself as I could see from the many photos I have seen since and my observations over the last few days. The comet itself is evolving and I could see that the outer part is less defined on one side than on the other where it is still a well formed circular shape. With the naked eye the comet is now very clearly non-stellar as its diameter continues to increase.

I also observed the Crab Nebula which is exceedingly faint in my light polluted skies, the M42 and Mars. The planet is not very large at 12.7 arcseconds across. I could see a dark band across the top (i.e. South when seen inverted) and a dark patch on the low Eastern side. I later checked that the dark band consisted of the Mare Cimmerium and the Mare Tyrrhenum and the patch to the East was Syrtis Major.