Comet Q2 Lovejoy choke closest to Earth on January 7th and has been putting on a great show this past calendar week . Glowing at order of magnitude +4 with a bluish coma nearly as openhanded as the Full Moon , the comet ’s sluttish to see with the naked heart from the right location if you get laid exactly where to look .
I care I could say just slant your head back and look up and clap ! there it would be , but it ’ll take a little more cause than that . But just a trivial , I promise .
Last night , under a sour rural sky , once I spot the comet and noticed its lieu in relation to nearby bright star , I could look up and see it anytime . Finding anything other than the Moon or a promising major planet in the night sky often requires a good map .
I unremarkably make a star - chart style function but think , why not make a photographic interpretation ? So last dark I snapped a few guided images of Lovejoy as it glimmered in the wilds of southerly Taurus and then clone the comet ’s nightly place through onto the ikon . Maybe you ’ll find this useful , maybe not . If not , the even map is also included .
To see Comet Lovejoy with the naked eye you ’ll need pretty sullen sky . It should be faintly visible from kayoed band suburbs , but country skies will warrant a sighting .
I ’ve been using bright stars in Orion and Taurus to guide opera glasses – and then my heart – to the comet . Pick a couple bright stars like Aldebaran and Betelgeuse and extend a line from each to form a trilateral with Lovejoy at one of the corners . If you then point binoculars at that spot in the sky , the comet should bug out out . If you do n’t find it directly , sweep around the position a number . After you find it , lower the field glasses and endeavor to spot it with the naked eye .
This week , as Lovejoy uphold trekking north , you could use bright orangey Aldebaran in Taurus and the Pleiades , also called the Seven Sisters star cluster , to “ triangulate ” your way to the comet . bet for a beam fuzzball . In 10×50 and 8×40 binoculars , it ’s obviously different from a superstar — all chuff up with a brighter center . The 50 mm glass even show up a wind of the coma ’s blue color triggered by carbon speck fluorescing in ultraviolet sunlight and a timid , streak - like tail extending to the northeast . With the nude eye , at first you might suppose it ’s just a dim star ; closer scrutiny reveal the star has a hazy appearance , pegging it as a comet .
Through a telescope the comatoseness is a HUGE pallid puritanical tiki lamp of a thing with a small , much shining atomic region . The re of the ion tail , so attractively shew in exposure , are indistinct but seeable with forbearance and a temperate - sized telescope under dark skies . At low exaggeration , the nucleus – the false nucleus actually , since the literal comet nucleus is hidden by a shroud of dust and gas – looks like a misty star of about order of magnitude +9 . On snug review at high magnification ( 250x and up ) , you click more deeply into the nuclear zone and the wiz - like center shrinks and dim to around order of magnitude +13 .
If the seeing is good and comet alive , high blowup will often reveal jets or fans of dust in the sunward counsel , in this case west of nucleus . I ’ve been analyze the comet the past duad nights and am almost convinced I can see a poor , very low line feather dig to the south of center of attention . loosely , plumes and jets are subtle , grim - demarcation features . Challenging ? Yes , but with Lovejoy as nigh as it ’s run to get , now ’s the time to look for them .
Just before Christmas , fluctuation in the solar wind snapped off Comet Lovejoy ’s tailnot once but twice . Guess what ? It happened again on January 8th as record in dramatic fashion by astrophotographer Rolando Ligustri . An ion or gas hind end like the one in the photo phase when cometary gases , principally carbon monoxide , are ionized by solar radiation and lose an negatron to become positively charged . Once “ wire ” , they can be wind , kinked and even snap off by magnetic fields embedded in the Sun ’s particle malarky .
Of course , the comet did n’t miss a breath but grew another tail immediately . Look closely at the exposure and you see another faint streak of sluttish pointing beyond the comatoseness below and left of the burnished atomic part . This may be Lovejoy ’s dust tail . Most comet frisk both types of tails – gas and junk – since they unloose both materials as the Sun heats and vanish their ices .
Lovejoy ’s been a flush to watch because it ’s doing all the cool clobber that makes them so fun to survey . Gianluca Masi , an Italian astrophysicist and buff of all thing cometary , will extend live provender of the cometon Monday January 11th protrude at 1 p.m. CST ( 7 p.m. UT ) . May your skies be open tonight !
This post byBob Kingoriginally seem atUniverse Today . It has been republished with permission .
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