Category Archives: comet

astronomy news, comet

Wanna See A Comet or Two?

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If you’ve always wanted to spot a comet with your very own eyes, there are a couple of them inbound that you should be able to see in the next few weeks. They’re called Comet LINEAR and Comet NEAT. Right now, Comet LINEAR is hard find to in the bright glow of dawn just above the eastern horizon before sunrise, and Comet NEAT is visible only from the Southern Hemisphere. But that will soon change.

For now, in the final week of April and the first few days of May, North American and European skywatchers do have a shot at spotting Comet LINEAR before dawn on clear mornings. Look with binoculars just above the horizon due east about 60 minutes before your local time of sunrise.

Later on in the month, both LINEAR and NEAT will come into in the evening sky. Starting around May 5th or 6th, scan for Comet NEAT just above the southwest horizon as evening twilight fades. Look for a small, fuzzy “star” with a small tail pointing to the upper left. (The much brighter star Sirius will also be low in the southwest; on May 5th the comet will be not far to its left, and on May 6th the comet will be to Sirius’s upper left.) In the next two weeks Comet NEAT will get much higher in the southwest at nightfall, though it will also fade. Binocular users may be able to follow it through the end of May.

Around May 26th or 28th, Comet LINEAR could steal the show when it too enters the evening sky. Look for it just above the west-southwest horizon as twilight fades. It will get only a little higher in the following week or two, while fading rapidly.

Full details, including charts showing when and where to look for both comets (from the Southern Hemisphere too!) appear in the May 2004 issue of SKY & TELESCOPE and in the article “The Double Comet Show of 2004,” online at SkyandTelescope.com.

Thanks to Alan MacRobert at Sky & Telescope for this information!

comet, stardust

Stardust in Your Eyes

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The Stardust Spacecraft encountering Comet Wild artists conception courtesy The Stardust Mission web page
The Stardust Spacecraft encountering Comet Wild artist's conception courtesy The Stardust Mission web page

Tis the season for planetary missions! Mars is in the picture for Christmas and after New Years and Cassini is already sending back great images of Saturn in preparation for its upcoming encounter with the ringed planet. But, little pieces of the solar system like comets and interstellar dust grains are coming in for attention, too. Right after New Years’ Day the Stardust spacecraft will have its turn in the limelight as it encounters Comet Wild 2. The idea behind this mission is to capture tiny grains of interplanetary dust that are caught up in the coma and tail of the comet. Onboard the spacecraft is a tennis-racquet shaped collector with aerogel embedded inside — and this is the stuff that will “capture” the dust grains. While all this is going on, the spacecraft will send back close-up pictures of the comet. Ultimately, the spacecraft will return to Earth in January 2006 and send the collector (safely stored inside a capsule) back to scientists who will test the dust grains to understand their composition and age.

The latest in comet dust-gathering technology: aerogel! The Stardust Mission web page
The latest in comet dust-gathering technology: aerogel! The Stardust Mission web page

Actually, Stardust has been collecting particles throughout much of its mission, all in an effort to understand more about what’s populating interplanetary space. The comet particles will also tell us much about the conditions in the solar system at the time the comet formed — back when the Sun and planets were coalescing.