Sixty years of comets!

The recent (and ongoing) excitement about Neowise caused me to reflect on the other comets I've been fortunate enough to have seen. The first I remember were in 1957, when I was just six! They were so bright that my brother and I were allowed to stay up to look at them on several occasions.

Most of the subsequent apparitions (as visits by comets are known to astronomers) have been fairly disappointing, but some were memorable. My elder brother Rob and I stayed up all night to catch a pre-dawn glimpse of Ikeya-Seki: I still remember the occasion vividly. We sat together in deck chairs (with our cat for company!) until the comet rose just before the Sun. I made some watercolour sketches which I sent to Sir Patrick Moore: Rob and I were thrilled when he mentioned these on 'Sky at Night'.

Many years later when Linda and I were studying Astronomy with the OU, we watched several fragments of Shoemaker-Levy impacting on Jupiter: even through our 5" refractor, the dark scars were plain to see.

As far as I can recall, this is a list of all the comets I've seen: some (but not all!) are my photos.