Another Comet from Lookout Observatory
Dear Friends,
There is a comet in the evening sky right now visible with the naked eye (barely) from a dark-sky location and visible with binoculars even in light-polluted urban areas. This is the 5th comet discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Lovejoy in just a few years. It is designated C 2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). If you want to see it, you need to know where to look, so I have attached a chart showing its location throughout January. It just looks like a fuzzy star to the eye, but long exposure photos show its tail. If you don’t want to bother looking in the sky, but want to see how it anyway, I have attached a photo taken from Lookout Observatory about 9 PM PST on January 13. The long dimension covers about 8 degrees, and you can trace the tail over at least 6 degrees. (For comparison, the full moon is about ½ degree across.) This photo was taken over 35 minutes of time, and I tracked on the comet, so you can see how much the stars trailed in that time. This gives you an idea of how rapidly the comet moves relative to the background stars. The 3rd and final attachment is a closer up photo taken through a 200mm lens rather than the 100mm lens used for the first photo. Even though it is twice the scale of the first photo, there is less movement relative to the stars because it was only 9 minutes long. However, it shows some of the detail (streaks) in the tail better. I hope you enjoy these pictures, and remember to keep looking up!
Carter Mehl,
(Sometime) Resident Astronomer,
Lookout Observatory
Click on any image to get a closer look
