Comet Lovejoy is starting to put on a spectacular show

reply to post by Chadwickus


Sorry chadwikus..I replied but it wasn't to your post directly. So I mentioned thank you for the reply and info. Wasn't this comet supposedly 500 meters in size? What other comet of this size had passed this close to the sun and survived? Thought you might know off hand because I know you know more than me about these rocks. Thanks.

Lightmeup04

Well it is not a small comet. Right after perihelion, astronomers put it way above 1km diameter. The sun heated up the internal juices of this baby and now it is just gushing them.

This is worth a trip from Boston to Sydney. Gonna check on that.... wow A Christmas comet, right on time, amazing timing.

Excellent post OP. This is a history comet like very few others.

Very cool pics i wish i could see it but overcast here

So if I'm in southern Ca what time should I wake up too see it?

reply to post by Aqualung2012


Feb sometime

Originally posted by krazyiven
So if I'm in southern Ca what time should I wake up too see it?

Joke, right? South as in Southern hemisphere. Australia and New Zealand probably the best.

This kind of blows me away, I do a fair bit of astrophotography, but I have not seen any news or updates about this comet on any of the sky watching sights I subscribe to, Thanks for posting this heads up, I will have to get out and shoot it now.

Ryan.

I missed it yesterday, left it too late to look.

4:00 A.M now and I just went outside and finally seen it!

Pretty cool, much bigger than I expected.

That is much more impressive than Hale-Bopp and the other one visible in the northern Hemisphere back in the nineties (it was Hale-Bopp twice). I was in the Army then and remember being on overnight guard mounts and seeing them pretty good with the naked eye, binoculars, and some of the optics on our howitzer. Those are great pics.

reply to post by Chadwickus


Fabulous pics - thank you so much for posting.

You can see why comets made such an impact on people down through the ages and became thought of as messengers of the Gods. It would certainly make me pause for thought.

Thanks again and seasons greetings to all.

S

Originally posted by charlyv

Originally posted by krazyiven
So if I'm in southern Ca what time should I wake up too see it?

Joke, right? South as in Southern hemisphere. Australia and New Zealand probably the best.

I believe the original question here is probally in relation to the above posted web site stating the tail of the comet might be visible from southern florida in the early morning.

@krazyiven - my best guess would be to check that site to see what time in FL it is expected to be visible, convert to GMT and then back to your local time.
Ca is what, I believe 4 hrs difference from Fl time?

reply to post by krazyiven


the link
astrobob.areavoices.com...

list 6:20am local time (key west), so perhaps 2:20am your local time?

Note - astronomy is truly not my forte, so you might want to check with someone a bit more familiar with the subject.

Blue star kachina anyone ? No ? Anyone ? ha ha, sorry guys I had to do it. Very jealous up here in the Arctic Circle.

2nd line

Originally posted by Chadwickus
reply to post by mblahnikluver

 

I see nothing in FL

Except rocket and shuttle launches!

I would have loved to have had the opportunity to see a shuttle launch with my own eyes.

Yea I miss the shuttle

Rockets still go up and I can at least see those. I am pretty close as you know.

It was awesome being at the KSC to see the last two launches!

Its Baaaack

spaceweather.com :
" COMET LOVEJOY BRIGHTENS: It's 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 telesope 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 comet's 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 pallette. The sinuous blue ion tail both contrasts and compliments the comet's 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 behaviour 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. "

Hey guys , free show today . I wouldnt miss this :

www.space.com...