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New Comet for the New Year
spac3manspiff writes "The news has several stories about a fairly new comet named Comet Machholz discovered by Don Machholz. The comet will be able to be seen in the sky on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2 or Jan. 5 through 8. Along with the comet's appearance: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will all be able to be seen with a naked eye this month. However, you will need binoculars to see the comet."
Not even the submitters seem to RTFA anymore. The article clearly states This comet currently is glowing at around magnitude 3.5 and is visible to the naked eye in dark, non-light polluted skies. I.e. the "you need a binoc to see it" it utter BS.
SpaceWeather has a spotting map. Should be easy to spot if you can find Orion and the Pleiades.
If you need to figure out where in the sky those planets are, try kstars. It is one of the better planetarium-type apps out there.
Now if only the 'summer' skies over New Zealand would clear for a night, I can actually make use of my shiny new telescope.
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Stellar Linux VPS Hosting
Try going to Skymaps.com
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
Each month you can download a PDF format sky map which has a list of naked eye visibly, binocular and telescope visible objects of interest. The one for January shows you where the comet is.
It is these types of comets that frustrate people who are interested in astronomy but don't know where to look.
You will not see it with the naked eye unless you are under very dark skies away from city lights. You will have more luck with binoculars and even then it will only appear as a dim smudge of light.
Finding it in the sky will be an exercise in frustration unless you are already comfortable orienteering the night sky. Your best bet will be on January 8th, when the comet will be just to the right of the Pleiades, an easily locatable star cluster in Taurus.
This page at Sky & Telescope has a decent finder map. Happy hunting and even if you don't see it, enjoy the night air. It's good for you...
Personally, when I'm hunting for this comet, I always start at Orion, it being one of the easiest constellations to recognize (just look for a straight line of 3 bright stars).
- Above and to your right of Orion (when he's standing straight up) is Taurus, of which bright orange Aldebaran is most visible.
- Keep following that line a few more degrees (I'd say about 3 fingers, your arm stretched out) and you'lle see a fuzzy 7-star cluster - that's the Peliades. Ninth of this month, the comet should be right next to it.
Here's a handy map:
http://encke.jpl.nasa.gov/charts.html
Jw
Yeah, it's also known as New York City.
When an upstater says 'upstate', they mean pretty much all of New York State, except New York City. Many people from outside of the 'upstate' area (as I refer to it), seem to think that upstate only means up in the Northeast corner. This includes people from the City.
What a bogus statement! The comet does not thake a few days off, it's going to be just as visable on January 3rd and 4th as on January 2nd and January 5th. There's a nice chart here that shows where in the sky to expect it each night.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's been quite bright (for a comet) in southern hemisphere skies for about a month now, and it's certainly worth going out to look at. I went out to look at it (from where I live in New Zealand) on December 11th. It was very easy to find in binoculars then (although I'm an amateur astronomer)... that was about mag 5.5. I haven't had a chance to see it since then because of bad weather.
If it's approaching mag 3.5 as the article suggests, it's getting very bright for a comet. If you're in reasonably unpolluted skies and know where to look, you might see it with an unaided eye. If you can't, though, you could probably see it in binoculars at least from low-lit suburban areas if you keep away from glare. Look with binoculars anyway, if you can, and you'll see a lot more. Frequently a reasonable pair of binoculars will reveal a lot more than a toy department store telescope.
If you're not sure where to look, keep in mind that you may also be able to contact a local observatory or astronomical society, and ask if they're having any open nights where you can have a look at it.
Don't expect anything really spectacular, of course. Most comets are a smudge on the background of the sky. Give your eyes time to adjust to what you're seeing, too. Like most thinks in amateur astronomy, you see more for the longer that you look at them. If you watch the comet over several nights, you may also see the appearence change quite a lot.
The linked yahoo article is quite misleading when it mentions brightness. It states that it's possible to see down to mag 6.5 in the most unpolluted skies. I think the author is confusing the difference between point sources of light, such as stars, and other sources. Comets are diffuse objects, and the comet magnitude describes the total amount of light that the surface emits. For this reason, a comet will appear significantly fainter than a star of the same magnitude. The exact difference depends on just how diffuse the comet is. Keep in mind, though, that even though it's bright, it's unlikely to leap out at you.
The Iridium flares are quite spectacular -- extremely bright if you're in the right place at the right time.
Thanks to www.heavens-above.com
Checkout this handy guide: Comet Machhholz(C/2004 Q2)
It helps if you first register your observing location.
In very basic terms -
- face south
- point your arm up at 11 o'clock
There is a cluster of stars, the Pleiades.
-- a little beneath that, to the left, is a "triangle" of stars, much more spaced out than the Pleiades. This is Taurus**.
The Pleiades, Taurus and Machholz make an almost perfect triangle - Machholz being the bottom right point.
It will be smudge-like, like a little cloud.
kulakovich
* I'm in North America, you insensitive clod!
** yes, one appears to be a "double" star. ~ six stars total including that.