On seeing Comet NEOWISE

As suggested in this Sky & Telescope article from Bob King, "whatever you do, see this comet." We have a rare and wonderful opportunity to see a comet taking shape and revealing itself day after day. Comets come and go unexpectedly and often show promise that they might develop into something but then fizzle out and disappoint. Comet NEOWISE (also known as C/2020 F3) is living up to expectations and is now a naked-eye object visible in the early morning skies. You will need to get up early to see it for the next few days, but it is worth the effort. And if you don't manage to see it by the 15th of July, it will appear in the evening sky after that. The image on the right comes from a member of the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers, my old club, with NEOWISE over the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Image by Moshen Chan

The most important thing if you want to see NEOWISE is to have a clear view to the north, either the north-east in the morning or the north-west in the evening. This Sky & Telescope article provides detailed charts where to look for the next two weeks. As they point out, you will have best results for the next few days 1-2 hours before sunrise, or after the 15th 1-2 hours after sunset. 

I had to get up very early two days ago (3:00 am here in Munich) to see it. I took a short walk to the fields nearby my neighborhood where I had a clear view to the north and there it was, a lovely glowing coma and a long and smooth tail pointing upwards, away from the Sun, easily visible to the naked eye but a special treat in my 10x50 binoculars. If you have binoculars be sure to use them in the hunt. A telescope is unnecessary and the magnification will be too strong. 

Good luck finding NEOWISE and enjoy this rare spectacle. 

Meteors, Meteors, Meteors!

November brings the annual Leonid meteor shower which peaks on Sunday November 17th. This year we have a second potential show, a "Meteor Outburst" on the evening of November 21-22. Unforunately the Moon will interfere quite a bit with the Leonids, but will have considerably less impact a few days later for the meteor outburst. Let's look at these two events in more detail.

Leonid Meteor Outburst in 1833

Meteor showers are some of the most exciting spectacles to watch in all of astronomy. However, the best views require dark, clear eastern skies and a willingness to be awake when most people are sleeping. And this time of year, they require warm clothes! If skies are clear, the Leonid Meteor Shower should be visible this weekend during the night of of November 17-18, but because of the 3/4 lit Moon, the sky will be glowing and only the brightest meteors will be visible.

Meteors are tiny bits of rock and dust that enter the earth's atmosphere and burn up. These bits of rock and dust are floating in long orbits in space and the earth "runs into" these clouds of rock and dust. Because the earth is moving so fast, the rocks and dust that are struck by the earth heat up from the friction of earth's atmosphere. The result of this are brilliant streams of light that are often called "shooting stars" but aren't stars at all, just very small visitors that shine briefly and flicker out.

The meteor shower coming up this weekend is called the Leonids and it is the result of the meteor stream from a comet known as Temple-Tuttle (comets are usually named after their discoverers). The shower is called Leonids because the comets appear to originate in the part of the sky where we find the constellation Leo the Lion. This constellation does not rise in the east until very late in the night and as such, we don't get the best view of the Leonids meteors until after midnight. This article by Deborah Byrd on EarthSky is very informative about the Leonids this year.

The "Meteor Outburst" a few days later is due to a similar cause as the Leonids themselves, the debris stream from a yet-to-be-discovered comet that has left a trail through which Earth will pass. That will happen on the night of November 21-22. This article from Sky & Telescope Magazine does an excellent job outlining the circumstances of the outburst and indicates that in the US you can expect a peak on the 21st around 8:50 pm pacific, 11:50 pm eastern, and here in Munich Germany around 5:50 am on the morning 22nd. I'll be up early to see if in fact we will get 100s of meteors storming in all at once. Can't wait!

Image credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

A Comet Fly-By on March 22 is going to be a close one

Finding comet P/2016 BA14

Comet P/2016 BA14 will pass Earth at a near record-setting close distance on March 22. It will pass within 2.2 million miles (about 9 lunar distances), a reasonably wide miss but nonetheless a close shave in the grand scheme of cometary fly-bys. And at its estimated size of 1500 feet, it is plenty large to cause catastrophic damage to Earth. Luckily we have no risk and no danger, and we also have a great network of telescopes watching for such objects. We can spot them quite far in advance.

Comet P/2016 BA14 is not alone. There is a companion called 252P/Linear with it that will also pass close to Earth but will not be a threat. The two comets are likely from the same origin but split apart.

You'll need a telescope to see either one, but with a full Moon this week, it will take some work. The image shows where to look on March 21st at closest approach.

More information from Sky & Telescope and from Earth Sky.

Comet Lovejoy arrives in the night sky

Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy has arrived in the night sky for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the coming days promises to be a fine sight especially through binoculars or a telescope, shimmering in green light with a slight tail. The comet is on a trajectory around the Sun and will pass nearest to Earth on January 7th, but given the geometry of its path, it will be ideally placed for viewing over the next few weeks as it rises high into the southern sky and as the Moon moves from Full to Waning phase. The finder chart, courtesy of Sky & Telescope, shows the daily movement of the comet across the backdrop of stars.

Path of Comet Lovejoy

I had good success finding it on January 1st despite the glow of the Waxing Moon, and look forward to tracking it down as soon as the moonlight begins to fade in a week. Stay tuned for updates. 

More information can be found in this excellent article from Sky & Telescope: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/spot-comet-lovejoy-tonight-122920141/

Comet Lovejoy in the morning

Comet Lovejoy

Despite the fizzle of Comet ISON, another comet is nearing its closest approach to the Sun and is assuredly *not* going to burn up. Comet Lovejoy 2013 is not a bright comet, but it is a beautiful sight with a long tail as it nears the Sun. Lucky for this comet, it won't be a "sun grazer" like ISON, so there is no threat of imminent disintegration. You'll need binoculars or a telescope to see it in any detail, and it will be best seen toward the end of December when the moonlight will interfere less with the night sky.

This article by Astro Bob contains good information on finding Lovejoy in the morning sky, presently in the constellation Hercules.

Image credit: Gerald Rhemann.

KGO TV 7 News Feature - Nov 26, 2013

I did a feature story on Channel 7 Evening News today with Wayne Freedman on Comet ISON. Click here to view.

KFOG Broadcast - Nov 26, 2013

Much discussion about Comet ISON and related 'cosmic' topics with Greg and Mudd on the KFOG Morning Show. Click here to listen. 

KGO Broadcast - November 24, 2013

Today's show on KGO featured a lengthly discussion about Comet ISON, asteroids, space travel and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Click here to listen.

Planets and Comet ISON

Lately while trying to view Comet ISON, I have been up early looking at the sky and enjoying the view to the east as stars and planets emerge from their sojourn around the Sun and start their trek across the sky. Saturn had been an evening sky object in the summer, disappeared from view in early fall, and is now arriving in the morning sky, with fleet-footed Mercury keeping it company.

These two planets are just barely visible this week in the glare of the Sun's early light, and are helpful markers in the quest to find Comet ISON. However, as ISON races toward its close encounter with the Sun on Thanksgiving day, it is pretty much out of sight, lost in the sunlight that bathes the eastern horizon.

Leonid Meteor Shower 2013 + Comet ISON

Comet ISON in Virgo

The Leonids peak this weekend, a lovely annual shower that is the result of a periodic comet that has left a field of debris that is 'bumped into' by the Earth. Like all meteor showers, the Leonids are best viewed after midnight, and can appear almost anywhere in the sky. Like all meteor showers, the best view is under a dark sky away from city lights. Unfortunately we have a full Moon this year for the Leonids, and that means that even in dark conditions, the bright light of the Moon will wash out many of the meteors. So although this is not the best year for this particular shower, there is a bonus: if you get up early to see the meteor shower, you will also get a good look at Comet ISON, which is passing through the constellation Virgo on its way toward the November 28th rendezvous with the Sun.  A good bet is to get up early on Sunday November 17th and enjoy a view of Comet ISON as it passes near the bright star Spica, and watch for a few meteors in the process. Finder chart here, or just use the map on the right. I wish you clear skies and good viewing!

Image courtesy EarthSky.

Comets are all around us!

November 2013 is becoming Comet Month, with Comet ISON on its way toward the Sun, and now Comet Lovejoy making a nice appearance in the morning sky as well.

Comet Lovejoy

Comet Lovejoy is well positioned in the eastern sky in the early morning hours this week, with the famous Beehive Cluster as your guidepost. This article on EarthSky has a lot of helpful information for finding the Beehive and therefore Comet Lovejoy this week. I'll take a look in the morning and report what I can see.

Astro Bob's blog has some good information about Lovejoy as well. Get out your binoculars!

Comet C/2012 S1 - Comet ISON Approaches

Comet C/2012 S1

Comets are beautiful and engaging to watch, gracefully floating across the night sky, arriving unexpected and sometimes surprising us with an extraordinary show. Some comets are regular visitors to Earth ("short period comets" such as Halley's Comet) and are very predictable, but others arrive from the vast reaches of the outer Solar System (the Oort Cloud) and make only one pass through our neighborhood, never to be seen again. Comet C/2012 S1, better known as Comet ISON, is of the latter category, packing enough ice and mass to become 'the comet of the century' when it has a rendezvous with the Sun in late November. Predictions of spectacular comets sometimes miss (anyone remember Comet Kohoutek?) so we always try to plan for comets with lowered expectations and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Finding Comet ISON

Comet ISON passed near Mars a few weeks ago and is on a near-collision course with the Sun. A comet with a close encounter like this is called a Sungrazing Comet -- Comet ISON will pass within a solar diameter of the Sun, so close that it might not survive the trip back out of the Solar System. If it does, however, it is expected to have a beautiful tail and could be quite a spectacle. We have to watch and see.

This coming week provides an opportunity to spot Comet ISON as it appears in the morning sky, when it will be in close alignment with Mars and the bright star Regulus. Look to the east before sunrise (around 5:00 or 6:00 am) and use some kind of optical aid such as binoculars, and you'll have a nice view of the comet. I'll be out each morning to take a look, and will update the blog with news.

Images courtesy of NASA/Hubble, and EarthSky.org.

Update October 15: have tried two mornings in a row to spot ISON with binoculars from San Francisco, but have not yet found it. Either it is quite tiny, too faint, the skies here are too light polluted, or all of the above. Will continue to try the remainder of this week.

The SETI and Europa Report

I don't post movie reviews on my blog, but I will talk a bit about a very interesting science fiction movie I enjoyed recently. The movie is called Europa Report, and it is a fact-based sci-fi, something that I quite enjoy because it employs very solid science and technology in its depiction of the future. In this case, the story is of a search for extraterrestrial life, a trip to the Jovian moon Europa in hopes of finding the first sign of life outside of Earth.

Europa Report poster

I find the search for extraterrestrial life and SETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) to be an excellent scientific endeavor, and the latest discoveries of exoplanets on the Kepler Mission, and the ongoing search being conducted by the SETI Institute at the Allen Array in Northern California, along with advanced astrobiology research going on at SETI in Mountain View, all are part of the grand search that captivates so many -- the ongoing pursuit of an answer to the question "are we alone in the universe?" I am happy that we live in a world where some of our tax dollars and donations support these scientific endeavors

The movie Europa Report, like Contact and Deep Impact, are portrayals of unusual or theoretical situations that attempt to remain scientifically grounded. I once heard astronomer and blogger Phil Plait give a fairly in depth assessment of Deep Impact, and although it has some flaws, it is mostly on the mark and an exciting movie for the subject at hand, a comet impacting the Earth. Europa Report follows the story of six astronauts on the long journey to one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, because it contains a large ocean of water under a layer of ice, and could harbor life. Without spoiling the movie ending, I'll simply say that the drama and excitement (and danger) of this kind of journey are well captured in this movie, and if you want an entertaining and riveting evening out, go see the movie. If you'd like a proper movie review, here are some good ones: Space.com is good, as is Roger Ebert's review and the review on io9.

KALW Broadcast: Asteroids, Comets and PanSTARRS

I paid a visit to KALW, San Francisco Public Radio, and talked with Ben Trefny about asteroids, comets and of course, PanSTARRS on their evening program Crosscurrents. Listen in to our lively discussion about the beauty and dangers of things roaring by from outer space! Click here to listen.

A Comet in the West: PanSTARRS from San Francisco

Comet Panstarrs in March

We have a comet about to emerge into the evening sky. PanSTARRS will be a nice sight, not a magnificent comet but an easy target that will be visible in the dusk sky in the next 2-3 weeks. I plan to look for it from Ocean Beach here in San Francisco, where the clear ocean horizon should provide a good setting.

Comet PanSTARRS is currently visible from the Southern Hemisphere, but will move north and into view later this week. Although its low apparition will not make it shine very brightly, it will be a lovely sight for those who make the effort to view it, especially through binoculars, where the image is best seen. A telescope will zoom in too far, and naked eye viewing of PanSTARRS will probably be unimpressive, so I strongly recommend a pair of binoculars to see the comet at its best.

Sky & Telescope Magazine has a very good updated page on the latest on the comet. And more information is also available on the Earth Sky website.

Image courtesy of Sky & Telescope.

Update March 12, 2013: Saw PanSTARRS from high above the Bay Area, on Skyline Boulevard near highway 92. I needed binoculars to see it well, making a beautiful appearance next to the young crescent Moon. It's work to find, but worth it.

Astronomy Events in 2013

Every year is full of special moments in the sky as planets and stars and the Moon align to create noteworthy patterns and special views. 2013 will be marked by many special moments, so here's a quick overview of them.

Comets

Comet Hale-Bopp

The event of the year could be the fly-by of Comet Ison, currently en route for a November 28th close encounter with the Sun, potentially lighting up the night (and even daytime) sky. More information on Comet Ison here.

Asteroids

Mark your calendar for February 15-16, when Asteroid DA14 will pass within 10,000-20,000 miles of the surface of the Earth. This is a big asteroid, at 125 feet, and could cause considerable damage if it was to impact. Lucky for us, we will not have anything to worry about. More here from Earth Sky.

Eclipses

Only one eclipse will be of significance for the West Coast, on October 18th when the Moon will pass within the Earth's penumbral shadow. This partial eclipse will start before moonrise in California, but once the Moon rises, should be a nice sight.

Occultations

Every month as the Moon slips past planets and stars in the night sky, there are moments when a distant object is blocked out by the Moon, called an Occultation. This year there are several close encounters that should be quite fun to watch from the Bay Area. Depending where you are on Earth, you can see more or less of these events. A few noteworthy ones: January 21 and March 17 when the Moon passes very close to Jupiter; and February 28-March 1 and July 15-16 when the Moon passes very close to the bright star Spica.

Be sure to check out the Year In Space calendar for 2013 which has fascinating facts and is a wealth of astronomy information for every day and month of the year. And happy viewing this year!

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

KFOG Broadcast - Dec 21, 2012

Today I joined Tim and Greg on KFOG In The Mornings to talk about the 2012 Apocalypse and 2012 Hoax, but we moved to more topics including the solstice, asteroids, comets, planets and stars, with calls from listeners too. We had a lively discussion and I am looking forward to more broadcasts with them in 2013. Click here for Part 1 of today's broadcast, and Part 2 of the broadcast.

Comets and Galaxies

One of my primary resources for astronomy information is Sky & Telescope Magazine, and the companion website skyandtelescope.com. I have been a loyal subscriber and follower of this publication for decades, and find the news and information relevant and timely for the amateur astronomer. Two articles recently caught my attention, and I'd like to share them here.

Comets:

Comet Hale Bopp

Astronomers have discovered a comet that in 2013 may become a very major event. Comet C/2012 S1 was discovered last week, and when it comes in close to the Sun in late 2013, could rival Hale-Bopp as a major comet in the night sky. Let's stay tuned for updates on this one. Comets are wonderful and rare, and a bright one like Hale-Bopp was unbelievable, visible from big cities and spectacular from dark locations. I have memories of driving on highway 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997, looking at a comet through the windshield of my car.

Galaxies:

Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field Observing Team has published a new image revealing 5,500 galaxies, the most distant as old as 13.2 billion years, meaning that it "emitted its photons only 450 million years after the Big Bang." Images like this are not just beautiful, but profound in their richness of information, revealing how far and wide our universe really is, and just how much more there is to discover.

Images courtesy NASA.

Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower 2011

Meteors are wonderful to see, arriving unannounced and fleeting in an instant across the sky, obligating the hopeful viewer to pay attention or miss this spectacle of the heavens. On any given night if you simply are out viewing the skies, you will probably see one or two, but throughout the year there are special times when the Earth's orbit takes us through a region of space dust, creating meteor showers, in which the intensity and regularity of meteors increases dramatically.

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks Thursday night, the night of May 5th into the morning of May 6th. This is not the biggest meteor shower of the year, but it certainly is interesting because it is caused by small bits of debris from the trail of Halley's Comet, the famous comet that orbits the Sun and is visible from Earth every 76 years. Comets leave small trails of debris in their wake, and comets that have orbits that intersect the orbit of Earth around the Sun create our annual meteor showers. So if you see an Eta Aquarid meteor tonight, you'll know it was once part of Halley's Comet, having been stripped away by the heating of the Sun on some past fly-by of Earth.

To see this shower, as is the case for all meteor showers, you need a dark location (even a backyard shielded from streetlights in the city will do), warm blankets, a recliner chair or a patch of grass to lie on, a big view of the sky, and patience. The name of this shower is based on Aquarius (the constellation) where the meteors appear to originate from, but they are visible all over the sky. Best viewing for this shower is early morning. The dawn sky will start to brighten around 5:00 am, so you will need to start early Friday morning if you want to see these. Have fun!

An Elusive Comet in Urban Skies: Hunting for Hartley 2

Comets can be bold and brash, streaking across the sky like Hale-Bopp in 1997 (see image on right), a comet that was visible even in light-polluted urban areas. Comets can be more humble but then unexpectedly brighten, as did Comet Holmes in 2007. This year marks the return of periodic Comet Hartley 2, a small but frequent visitor to the inner Solar System that is making a fairly close pass to the Earth (11 million miles) on October 20th. Because of the bright Moon on October 20th, this and last week mark the best chances to see the comet because the Moon is young and not brightening the sky. So I took a look last week and again this week to see if I could spot this elusive comet from a city location (last week in a suburb of Frankfurt, Germany and this week from my home in San Francisco).

I hunted quite a while on both occasions, using this very helpful map from Sky and Telescope Magazine. In fact, S&T has been running updates as viewers report seeing Comet Hartley 2 with binoculars. However, it seems that to see Comet Hartley 2 you need a location with very dark skies. I can attest to this, having twice tried and failed to discern the comet from the surrounding stars.

However, all is not lost. Searching for Hartley 2 requires you to find Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga, three very nice constellations that grace the Fall and Winter skies. While searching the path of the comet, you encounter a range of deep space objects near and between Cassiopeia and Perseus, and tonight the view was quite good. So even though city lights may have drowned out the faint comet, I enjoyed my first good look at the Double Cluster in Perseus and other celestial gems in the spiral arm of the Milky Way that is beyond Cassiopeia.

I recommend a good jacket, a comfortable chair or blanket, a few minutes patience, the S&T sky map, and binoculars. No matter whether your hunt for Comet Hartley 2 is a success or not, you will be glad you made the effort.