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Comet Lulin Closest To Earth Tonight
William Robinson writes "Comet Lulin, formally known as C/2007 N3, which is on a visit to the inner solar system, will make its closest approach to earth tonight, about 38 million miles away. To the naked eye, the comet looks like a fuzzy patch of hazy light in the southeastern sky near Saturn, at the tip of Leo the Lion's hind leg. After this brief visit, Lulin will be heading back out to its kin in the Oort Cloud."
If you're a bit too busy to go out of the basement to look, bear in mind that it won't be coming around again for another 50 million years (give or take 500,000 or so), so you might want to brave going outside after all.
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Too bad the /. posting is a day late.
Just like Halley's Comet, you won't be alive for another chance to see it. Hopefully, it will be more visible than Halley's was back in the day.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Uh, I believe this happened Monday night.
I got a picture of Comet Lulin early Saturday morning.
It's not nearly so impressive as Holmes was last year - but it certainly moves impressively fast. When I was taking test shots to check focus, I saw the comet visibly moved relative to the stars in 15 seconds. Holmes wasn't nearly that fast. I made an animation showing its motion relative to the stars over a period of 20 minutes.
Even in my 8-inch scope it was pretty underwhelming. This was nowhere near a Comet Holmes type event, where it was obviously naked eye visible and glorious in any kind of optics. Flipped the scope around and went cluster hunting, so the night wasn't a wash :^).
You can still see it tonight (and for the next week) if you want: bring binoculars at the minimum. A finder chart is at Sky and Telescope. Note that the chart on that page is for 9PM EST but that the detailed charts are UTC.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The comet did not disappear with a pop at 0000 GMT.
It may have been a little brighter last night, but the difference was almost certainly imperceptible. It was still an extremely marginal naked-eye object -- you need really dark skies to see it without binoculars or a telescope.
If you're a comet aficionado, it's kind of nice. With a good scope and well-trained eye, you might glimpse some color, and you might be able to make out the tails. If you're set up for astrophotography (with a tracking mount for your camera), you can get some good photos. But if that's the case, you probably didn't need Slashdot to tell you this was coming.