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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."
Well, I *just* got a pair of binoculars for Christmas.
I read TFA, but I have no idea where to look for this thing. Does anyone know where to look, say, if you live in upstate New York?
Since most of us are living in quite light polluted areas, I think the submitter is essentially correct if a bit wrong on the technical aspects. No harm, no foul.
I just happened to be out looking at this comet and what do you know, /. has an article about it when I came back inside.
I found it pretty quickly from the guide in Sky and Telescope, although the suggested spotting map will work just fine, too. I used a pair of 10x30 binocs and spotted it almost instantly. Took me another minute to make sure I wasn't looking at some other nebula. My non-techie wife was able to spot it just about as quickly - said it kind of pops out at you as you scan the heavens in the general area.
It's just a "dim fuzzy", and probably won't get much brighter, but it's cool to see. Set up my 6" telescope to see if the view was better. Kind of, but no further definition to speak of. Still definitely worth hauling out the binocs.
Unfortunately, it won't. Hyakutake made a fairly close pass at earth, and hence put on a pretty good show. Macholz will be over 1/2 an AU away at it's closest, and from the data I've seen so far, it looks like it's a fairly small comet. There's just not enough surface area to allow the kind of sublimation needed for the comet to become bright (although that does not rule out some kind of outburst occuring). Also, this comet is nearly at opposition when it will be at it's brightest, meaning that the earth is almost directly between the comet and the sun, so the tail is pointing almost directly away from earth, which means you won't see a nice long tail either (even if by some chance the comet flares up and becomes real bright for a few days).
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