comets and meteors

 

I went out to look for comet Hartley 2 this morning and thought I was barely able to make it out (by not looking directly at it).

 

However, now that I've looked more at some star charts, I think was I was seeing was the stars Nu Aurige and Tau Aurigae.  The comet was riiiiggght theeeerre close to them, but was probably just a little too faint to register.

 

The moon was full and up, so viewing wasn't great.  Perhaps if I'd been further out from the city I could have seen it.

 

I did see three shooting stars inside of a minute, though, and I saw another one as I was driving to work.  The radiant for these is very near Auriga, the constellation that the comet is currently passing through, so I was staring straight at the first three meteors when I was them. Very nice!

 

These meteors are the Orionids, which are the remains of Halley's Comet.