On Wednesday, the comet will pass between Earth and the sun. The closer the comet is to the sun and the horizon, the more difficult it will be to see. “This will not be an easy comet to see, unless you’ve observed comets before.” “Each day this week the comet is getting a little closer to the Sun, the time window gets narrower, and the comet gets even closer to the horizon,” he said. You can use Time and Date to determine when morning twilight, also called civil twilight, occurs in your area. Manuel Romano/NurPhoto/Getty Imagesįor those in the Northern Hemisphere, Chodas recommends finding a clear view of the east-northeast horizon about half an hour before morning twilight. If you’re trying to distinguish the comet from other objects in the night sky, keep in mind that the comet’s tail will always point away from the sun because the sunlight continually pushes on the fine dust particles, said Dave Schleicher, astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.Īnd while the comet appears greenish in photos due to the presence of diatomic carbon, it will appear nearly colorless or slightly pink through binoculars as sunlight reflects off the dust grains, which are smaller than particles in talcum powder, Schleicher said.Ĭomet Nishimura can bee seen as a faint green dot in the sky over L'Aquila, Italy, on September 7. Sky and Telescope has shared charts that can help sky-gazers spot the comet. And dark skies away from city lights provide optimal viewing. ![]() The comet is barely bright enough to be visible from Earth due to distance and will be moving close to the horizon, so binoculars are the best way to see it, Chodas said. No comets recorded during that time frame appear to correspond with Nishimura, but it would’ve had to be quite bright to be seen, Hale said. “We don’t know whether it got bright enough to be seen with (the) naked eye back then.” Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, wrote in an email. Nishimura completes one orbit about every 430 to 440 years, “which means the last time it passed close to the Sun (and might have come closer to Earth) was around the year 1590, before the invention of the telescope,” Dr. It will get much closer to the sun, passing within 21 million miles (nearly 34 million kilometers) of the star on September 17, according to Alan Hale, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp and founder and president of the Earthrise Institute. ![]() Japan launches X-ray satellite, ‘Moon Sniper’ lunar lander
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