It forms a straight line with them when the stars come out over the eastern Canadian Maritimes. ■ The nearly full Moon shines just below Pollux and Castor during evening. By then it will probably be about mag 6.2, some 250 times fainter than Mars but still waiting for your binoculars or telescope. On the evenings of February 10th and 11th the comet will be less than 2° from Mars. After that, the Moon rises about an hour later each evening - affording dark views of the receding comet high overhead for the next two weeks as it moves south across Taurus toward the shield of Orion. On the evening of February 8th, with the sky now moonlessly dark for an hour or so after the end of twilight, the comet will be passing close by Iota Aurigae and probably t about magnitude 6.0. If/when the comet becomes too faint for that chart to suffice, use the more detailed one in the February Sky & Telescope, page 48 (where the dates are for 0:00 UT subtract one day from those to get the North American civil date.) (On that chart, the comet symbols are labeled with the dates for evening in North America, not the UT date.) See Bob King's article Understanding the Tails of Comet ZTF, with a finder chart for use in February. The comet is heading almost due south after its brush past the Little Dipper. Note the narrow, straight ion tail and the broad, curved dust tail. Comet ZTF E3, imaged on January 21st by Pepe Chambó of Valencia, Spain, using an 8-inch short-focus reflector. By February 10th it will probably be down to about 6.2. It reached magnitude 5.0 around the beginning of the month. But the Moon is gone from the early evening sky after February 7th, with the comet very high overhead in Auriga heading toward Taurus. Comet ZTF is fading and receding into the distance.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |