Comet Jacques C/2014 E2 Heads into the August Evening Sky... August 2014 sees Comet Jacques C/2014 E2 blaze an icy trail through the evening sky. Look to the north-east after dark to watch Comet Jacques glide swiftly through the constellations of Perseus, Cassiopeia and Cepheus as it heads towards a 30th August rendezvous with Mu Cephei – the Garnet Star. The Comet Jacques finder chart below should help you pinpoint the position of the comet in the August evening sky. Best time to look for C/2014 E2 Jacques in August is from 10pm onwards. Mid-month the magnitude +6.4 comet lies close to Mirphak in Perseus. It’s an easy catch in a telescope, appearing as a bright round nebulous haze with a distinctly brighter centre. Through the rest of August Jacques will climb higher into the sky and appear to ‘speed up’ from night to night as it moves from Perseus into Cassiopeia. On the nights of 20th and 21st August 2014 the comet can be seen with a telescope slightly to the left of the Perseus Double Cluster. You won’t get both in the same field of view, but a slight nudge of the scope to the left of the Double Cluster will bring the comet into view. Comet Jacques C/2014 E2 and the Garnet Star... On 30th August 2014 Comet Jacques moves right next to Herschel’s Garnet Star – Mu Cephei – in the constellation of Cepheus for an unforgettable star-comet conjunction. The comet and the Garnet Star will be separated by around 0.5-degrees, and so can easily be seen in the same field of view with a telescope. The Garnet Star is just about the reddest star you are likely to see in a telescope in the night sky. It is a huge star that is coming towards the end of its life, having fused all of its hydrogen to helium, and most likely is now shining through the fusion of helium to carbon. It is also phenomenally luminous. Its average magnitude in our night sky is +4.2…nothing special perhaps. But when you consider that the Garnet Star is a whopping 5260 light years from Earth when most other stars you see of equal brightness in the night sky are between 20 – 400 light years away, you can perhaps begin to see how big and bright the Garnet Star must be in reality. Many astronomers believe that the Garnet Star is one of the largest stars in our galaxy!
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 10:06:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015