COMET LOVEJOY BRIGHTENS: Its official. Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is now a naked-eye object. Science journalist and longtime comet watcher Mariano Ribas of the Planetario de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, reports that Comet Lovejoy has reached magnitude 5.0, just above the threshold for human visibility from dark-sky sites. Even in the light polluted sky of Buenos Aires, the comet is a very easy object in 10x50 binoculars. On Dec. 28th, Italian astrophotographer Rolando Ligustri used a remotely-controlled telescope in Australia to capture this image of the comet passing by star cluster M79: Alan Dyer, author of the e-book How to Shoot Nightscapes and Timelapses, confirms the comets growing brightness: From my dark observing site near Silver City, New Mexico, the comet was visible to the naked eye on Dec. 27-28, though only if you knew just where to look. Roughly speaking, the comet is passing south of the constellation Orion. Finder charts from Sky & Telescope will help you find it in the midnight sky. For accurate pointing of telescopes, an ephemeris from the Minor Planet Center is available. For astrophotographers interested in beauty shots, Comet Lovejoy has a marvelous palette. The sinuous blue ion tail both contrasts and compliments the comets puffy green atmosphere. These colors come from ionized carbon monoxide (CO+) and diatomic carbon (C2), which glow blue and green, respectively, in the near-vacuum of interplanetary space. Looking the behavior of this comet over the past month, I think that it will brighten to magnitude 4.5 or even 4.0 in the first week of 2015, predicts Ribas. If so, the show has just begun. Stay tuned for updates spaceweather/
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:35:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015