'cause I can’t find it.
I live in Michigan and am trying to find this comet that hasn’t been by in 341 years.
Anyway, you are supposed to look right of Mars, past two stars that are almost vertical.
How do I find Mars? Why am I so ignorant?
Anyone else find this thing. Can you tell me how?
I’ve been looking, but I think it sets too close to the sun now. Later (like in April) it will be on the way back from the sun and be easy to see in the morning, or so the experts hope. I haven’t been looking too hard because of the persistant clouds we’ve been having here, but I have my hopes up for April and viewing Ikeya-Zhang. Mars is one of the brighter objects in the western sky right now, and it is slightly reddish. Get a good sky map and finding Mars will be a cinch.
I saw it last night. Here’s a finder chart: http://www.spaceweather.com/images2002/25mar02/skymap_north.gif.
With the light pollution, moon light, and closeness to the western horizon, I wasn’t able to spot it naked eye, but
even modest quality binoculars make it easy to see. It looks like a fuzzy star and the tail is pretty faint, but visible. As the chart indicates, the easiest way to find it is to locate Venus and look a few degrees up and to the right.
It’s too late tonight, but go out about 8 p.m. tomorrow, look west-northwest, and the comet should be about 15º above the horizon. So where’s WNW? At that time, Mars is pretty much due west and approx. 25º up. It’s distinguished from other celestial objects by its reddish hue. But if you can’t find Mars, you may want to go out a few hours earlier and watch the sun set, which would be roughly due west of you for this time of the year. Once that direction is known, you should be able to figure out the rest. As to an object’s height above the horizon, a handy (no pun, really) guide is to make a fist and stretch out your arm in front of you – the span from the bottom of your fist (pinky) to the top (thumb) is roughly 10º, and if you spread your fingers, it’s 25º from the tip of the pinky to the end of your thumb.
If the sky is still too bright at that time to see the comet, watch the pattern of stars surrounding where it’s supposed to be, as that will guide you to finding it later on in the night. At 8:30 p.m. the comet will be about 10º high; any later and it’ll probably be swallowed up by atmospheric muck to be visible. The two vertically-aligned stars are Hamal and Sheratan, and are separated by roughly two to three finger widths. The comet can be found by tracing a line from Mars through these two stars (actually the line is nearer to the top star), at about 80% of the distance that Mars is from these stars. Use binoculars, as it’ll probably be hard for an inexperienced observer to tell anything by naked eye. I saw it a week ago, looking over the San Francisco Bay, with the Golden Gate Bridge as a nice backdrop. Fuzzy head, with barely made-out tail structure (for my eyes, anyway) above it.
In the next few days, the waxing moon will interfere with observations. Later in April the comet swings higher (and therefore more visible) in the eastern side of the early morning sky. I don’t know where you are in Michigan, but these directions should work (I dialed my astronomy program to Lansing).
Why are you so ignorant? Because we’re all ignorant of some things, and we’re not born with an innate knowledge of the sky – especially in this day of easy night-time distractions and much light pollution. So go out, look up, and enjoy (and learn) your way in the dark.
I wanted to post again because I finally saw it tonight! Yay me. It was faint, but with binoculars there was no mistaking that tail.
