salutations celestial sight seers i'm david fuller welcome to eyes on the sky
what's up this week first thing i want to do is let you know
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what i'm doing so let's get to what's happening this
week - there is a comment that is visible
and since earlier this year we had comet atlas and comet swan that both kind of
either disintegrated or fizzled and didn't really do a whole lot despite
high expectations comet neowise has managed to survive
perihelion with the sun and should be visible in both the
morning and the evening sky. how is that possible? well i'm gonna show
you! do note that i have made a video that
shows you exactly how to add a comet into stellarium so you can
see where it will be for you because depending on where you are located
uh the comet will be in different parts of the sky
so for example if you live in great britain somewhere
then the comet may actually never set it may be low on the horizon but it will be
visible perhaps all night but if you live somewhere well south of
me say in india as some of my viewers do it may be more difficult
to see just because of how close it is to the sun
and where the sun comes up for you but here in the united states
i want to show you kind of what's happening so if we go back two months or
so and look at how the comet was kind of
going towards the sun we can look over here
and see how close it is to the sun and
distance from the sun it was one astronomical unit away
about the same distance as earth about a month before
perihelion and then as we get closer we can see how
right on the 3rd of july its closest distance was 0.295
astronomical units now it looks further away
than what it was here but that's just because of how the orbital mechanics
work so this is actually its closest point to the sun
so what that means for us is is that a couple days out if we move forward
into our evening sky and i have left out the ground intentionally so you
can kind of see what the comet is doing because although
it's a little low in the sky here for the evening watch what happens when we
move over into the morning
i'm gonna swing this over this way and four in the morning or so actually let's
bring this up to five in the morning you can see how it's nice and high in
the sky over there so let's do the northeast there and then
if we back up through our evening you can see
how it kind of like grazes below and it's not quite high enough over here
but as we go forward in time you can see how that gets higher in the
evening sky like that but if we go back
and bring it over into the morning here's the morning sky i'm going to go
actually go to about 4 30 or so because that's going to give a
little bit better idea and then we head up through the
time frame and you can see how it sort of goes
over but then down towards the horizon so
that gives you some indication of what's happening now
don't necessarily rely on what these magnitudes show because stellarium very
often doesn't show the magnitude very well
um what i have learned from some people who have looked at this with just within
the last day or two it's at about magnitude 1 right now
which is very bright but we have kind of a short window to be
able to see it before it really kind of races away from the sun
and also loses a lot of magnitude so there's two different ways to look at it
one is going to be obviously be in the morning while it's still high
like this let me put the ground back up so you can see this a little better
so we do the landscape we can show the ground again and that's how you also
take the ground back off uh so
from now through i'm gonna say about a week or so
you you've got some time maybe even a little longer than that um
if we look at how high it is above we've got
some enough elevation to me about five degrees up is really kind of the minimum
you get below that and you're looking through so much
atmosphere even trying to photograph through so much atmosphere comets
don't really show up very well but if you're above
five then you've got a good opportunity now look at that 4 30 in the morning
you're going to have some nice chances to be able to see that before it really
kind of drops down so maybe about 10 days for
a morning object but then let's go look at it over in the evening sky
and back that up and you can see how it really kind of races
up but again it's getting further away from the sun at the same time
so we got about five degrees maybe starting on the 12th
we're further away from the sun so the magnitude may be less my
estimates that i've seen put this at about magnitude two
so it may be brighter in the morning sky if you get up early to go see it in the
next uh week or so but then it's going to start
to dim as it gets away but then in the evening sky it's going to race up much
higher and we can even kind of move this ahead
in some time to about 10 o'clock so it's darker
and you've got good contrast at like 10 o'clock at night you're up about 9 10
degrees or so and that should give a nice view of this
particular comet so again to load this into
stellarium check out one of my previous videos it's uh how to load a comment
into stellarium so you can see how it's gonna look for
you for your latitude and then check out where it's gonna be
relative for your time zone how high it will be
above the sky for both either the evening or morning
but the sooner you can see it the brighter it will be
but i think we've got about two weeks to be able to see this
comet pretty well and uh since it survived its
uh closest trip from this or its closest point
away from the sun uh on the third we're looking like we actually have finally a
good comet to take a look at so don't miss this one the moon should be largely
out of the way for most this because it's a northern
looking comet and the moon's going to be towards the south
so plus the moon is going now from full uh into waning gibbous phase so
give this comet an opportunity it's comet
c 2020 f3 neowise and hopefully we can all see
a great comet for 2020 and hopefully this one doesn't actually portend
something of doom despite all the murder hornets and plagues and other things
that have been happening in 2020 yay that's all for this week
keep your eyes on the sky and your outdoor lights aimed down so we can all
see what's up i'm david fuller wishing you clear and
dark skies