2013 could be a good year for stargazers. I heard about C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) last year. It has the potential to be a bright, easily-visible comet.
Just a few hours ago, there’s a report of a new comet: C/2012 S1. The breathless reports are that it could be brighter than the full moon, which would be amazing (and something not seen for 400 years), but I’d be happy if it was half as bright as Hale-Bopp. Predicting the brightness of a comet this early is always dicey, especially a “new” comet (one that’s never traveled around the sun before).
Great! I waited thirty-odd years for a comet (was wildly disappointed by Kohoutek on the way), really enjoyed seeing Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the nineties, and would be just about ready to see a couple more.
Thanks for the link…haven’t been hitting my astonomy sites lately. I hope the predictions hold up this time around…but nonetheless, I always love dragging my Dob out for something new.
Hale-Bopp was the only one I’ve seen & that was pretty cool. Remember how much of a dud Halley’s was also- AFTER HEARING ALL MY LIFE HOW SIGNIFICANT IT WAS TO PAST GENERATIONS!
When they told us that, there was far less suburban sprawl, and much less light pollution. By that I mean that even within the cities and suburbs, the lights used were not so harsh and detrimental to night-sky vewing. There was a lot less wasteful up-lighting, and sodium vapor lights hadn’t come into such widespread use.
Comet West (1976) was the last comet I saw that was more than a faint fuzzball. It got surprisingly little publicity but was beautiful. Classic comet appearance.
I’m hoping to see another one of its caliber someday, maybe one of these will match it.
Here’s a photo of Comet PANSTARRS that I took tonight (3/10) from the middle of Phoenix. I plan on going to the outskirts of town on Tuesday for what I hope will be a great photo opportunity.
Ooh, nice! That’s much brighter than I expected it to be, especially through all those lights. My husband and I are going to drive up over our western slope Tuesday and/or Wednesday to look for the comet—if it ever stops snowing, that is. We’re over an hour out of the nearest large city so should have a decent look at it if the weather permits.
I should mention … another very large one in 2014, on a near collision course with Mars, and if it hits it dead on, will release roughly one billion megatons! The odds of that are very low, but still cool to think about possibly the biggest light show in human history. For a rough comparison, the largest comet fragment of Shoemaker-Levy that hit Jupiter dead on was only about 6% of that.
Some nice pics there Beowulff. Went done to the local park and got a decent view of the comet. Clouds were and issue but they parted here and there and 50 percent of the time it was unobstructed. Regular non astromer folks could just see it naked eye. Looked much better and like a little comet in the sky in binocs. I had brought a 6 inch scope and it looked fairly nice at 50 power. Showed it too all the folks and Jupiter and the Orion nebula as well.
Must been one at least semi-astronomer lurking in the dark. I heard him exclaim to his friend as he approached me “cool, somebody brought a dobsonian!”
I almost replied in a stern haughty British uppercrust tone "Dear Sir. I built this scope with my own two hands. My name is Mr. Fish, not Mr. Dobson. If you would like to view the comet tonight perhaps you should go find Mr. Dobson. Good Day (night?) to you sir. I said good day (night?).
But I figured he might not get my dry sense of humor.
Will try for some photos tonight since it will be a bit higher.
