Sunday, January 4, 2015
Here’s how to see a comet passing by Earth.
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| © Rogelio Bernal Andreo/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3), a long-period comet. |
The comet, called C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), is already visible to the naked eye in some areas, and will make its closest approach to Earth on January 7
Comets that are visible without telescopes at all only come around about once per year, and most of them are much fainter than this one. So sometime between January 7 and 22 or so, go outside and take a look.
Regardless of where you live, you can already see the comet each night starting a few hours after sunset. Slate's Phil Plait recommends trying to view it at starting around 9 pm or so, when it'll be relatively high above the horizon. But over the next month, it'll move higher and higher in the sky, so it'll already by quite far from the horizon by sunset for most Northern hemisphere viewers.
Unless you live in a place with little light pollution, binoculars or a telescope are probably necessary to get a view of the comet right now.
This chart, from Sky and Telescope, shows where to look for the comet as it moves North and away from the horizon over the course of January.
The comet was first spotted in August by Terry Lovejoy, an Australian amateur astronomer who'd already discovered four other comets in his spare time. It wasn't originally predicted to be easily visible, but it's already become far brighter than projected.
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