Boattini’s Morning Reprise

C/2007 W1 (Boattini)
Sketch and Details by Michael Rosolina

At present, there are two comets in the night sky that bear the name Boattini. One, C/2008 J1 (Boattini), is currently moving out of Cepheus and is visible all night long. The other, C/2007 W1 (Boattini), dipped below the horizon for northern hemisphere observers back at the end of May and did not reappear until the beginning of July. To see C/2007 W1, an observer had only a short time span as the comet rose with the constellation Cetus and was soon lost in the dawn glare.

My sketch shows how W1 Boattini appeared to me through my 15×70 binoculars on the morning of July 15th. I then was able to take advantage of clear weather and plot the comet’s position over the next two mornings as it traveled to the NNW through Cetus past the 4th magnitude star lambda Ceti.

The original sketch and position updates were done in the field on Strathmore sketch paper with a 2B pencil and blending stump. I then inverted the sketch after scanning, applied 5% blur, and added the text.

Like most comets, W1 Boattini was easiest to see from dark, moonless skies with good transparency. It was difficult to impossible to observe visually while the Moon was bright, but now that Luna is on the wane, it will once again be possible to observe it. It is now in Aries, higher in the sky and visible earlier and for a longer time before morning twilight. If you get the weather and opportunity, try and observe it over several mornings to detect its motion against the background stars.

Michael Rosolina
Friars Hill, West Virginia, USA