There’ll be plenty of fireworks to mark the New Year in a few hours … and one new light in the sky is a recently discovered comet.
… and if you miss it this month, you’ve got another 8,000 years to get ready to see it again.
Here’s what NASA said about the latest Lovejoy comet:
Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, … Its lovely coma is tinted green by diatomic C2 gas fluorescing in sunlight. Discovered in August of this year, this Comet Lovejoy is currently sweeping north through the constellation Columba, heading for Lepus south of Orion and bright enough to offer good binocular views. Not its first time through the inner Solar System, this Comet Lovejoy will pass closest to planet Earth on January 7, while its perihelion (closest point to the Sun) will be on January 30. Of course, planet Earth’s own 2015 perihelion passage is scheduled for January 4. A long period comet, this Comet Lovejoy should return again … in about 8,000 years.
Bad Astronomy has this advice for viewing:
As a bonus, it’s passing near the constellation of Orion, making it easier to find, and it’ll also glide past Taurus and the Pleiades, providing for what should be some pretty photogenic scenes. It’s moving roughly north, so it gets higher all the time for Northern Hemisphere observers. …
If you want to see this comet for yourself—and you do—it rises a couple of hours after sunset. For now, I suggest waiting until about 9-ish or so to look, since it will be high off the horizon then, but your kilometerage may vary. It rises earlier every day, and by early January it’ll be high up by the time it gets dark (though the nearly full Moon will make things tougher; after about Jan. 7 or so the Moon will rise late enough that it won’t be as big a problem).
Sky and Telescope provided this background on the one who discovered it:
This is Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy’s fifth comet discovery. He found it last August at 15th magnitude in Puppis, in the comet-search images that he takes with a wide-field 8-inch scope. His previous discovery, C/2013 R1, put on quite a show in late 2013 for observers in the Southern Hemisphere.
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1rBTgJv
There’ll be plenty of fireworks to mark the New Year in a few hours … and one new light in the sky is a recently discovered comet.
… and if you miss it this month, you’ve got another 8,000 years to get ready to see it again.
Here’s what NASA said about the latest Lovejoy comet:
Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, … Its lovely coma is tinted green by diatomic C2 gas fluorescing in sunlight. Discovered in August of this year, this Comet Lovejoy is currently sweeping north through the constellation Columba, heading for Lepus south of Orion and bright enough to offer good binocular views. Not its first time through the inner Solar System, this Comet Lovejoy will pass closest to planet Earth on January 7, while its perihelion (closest point to the Sun) will be on January 30. Of course, planet Earth’s own 2015 perihelion passage is scheduled for January 4. A long period comet, this Comet Lovejoy should return again … in about 8,000 years.
Bad Astronomy has this advice for viewing:
As a bonus, it’s passing near the constellation of Orion, making it easier to find, and it’ll also glide past Taurus and the Pleiades, providing for what should be some pretty photogenic scenes. It’s moving roughly north, so it gets higher all the time for Northern Hemisphere observers. …
If you want to see this comet for yourself—and you do—it rises a couple of hours after sunset. For now, I suggest waiting until about 9-ish or so to look, since it will be high off the horizon then, but your kilometerage may vary. It rises earlier every day, and by early January it’ll be high up by the time it gets dark (though the nearly full Moon will make things tougher; after about Jan. 7 or so the Moon will rise late enough that it won’t be as big a problem).
Sky and Telescope provided this background on the one who discovered it:
This is Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy’s fifth comet discovery. He found it last August at 15th magnitude in Puppis, in the comet-search images that he takes with a wide-field 8-inch scope. His previous discovery, C/2013 R1, put on quite a show in late 2013 for observers in the Southern Hemisphere.
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1rBTgJv
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