Night Sky Astronomy

Posts Tagged ‘comet pan-starrs’

Last night we went out again to try and find Comet Pan-Starrs as it was a clear night, but unfortunately, we didn’t manage to see it. There was a band of cloud along the horizon where I am sure the Comet would have been, and it was also very frosty so the atmosphere of the Earth wasn’t as clear as it had been the previous nights when we have been out. It was a bit of a shame, but we at least saw the Comet on our second attempt which was great!

Instead last night, we had a look around at the other objects in the Sky with our binoculars. Jupiter was very bright and you could see a couple of it’s Moon’s shining beside it, and we also had a good look at the Pleiades (also known as the ‘Seven Sisters’ as they are a group of seven stars that shine very brightly. The Pleiades were clear as a bell through the binoculars and were a great site! Finally, we had a go at looking for the Orion Nebula and that was showing really well. You could see a blurry, but large, mass of stars which make up the Nebula in the sword of the Constellation Orion (just south of Orion’s belt). It was a great view!

So whilst we were annoyed we couldn’t see the Comet again, we had a good time looking at some of the other features that make up the night sky!

After not being sure if we would make it out this evening due to Kelly being ill all last night and this morning and the strange weather that we have had today (rain, sleet, hail and snow!), we did manage to go out, and I am very glad that we did as we spotted the Comet!! 😉

Instead of going to Jenny Cliff, we made the shorter journey up to Shaugh Prior on Dartmoor, as we knew of a good vantage point there, and arrived shortly after sunset (about 18:30 with sunset being 18:18).  The Moon was a lot higher in the Sky tonight than last night, and a lot easier to spot as it was a much brighter crescent.  So we had a good look around it but couldn’t see anything to start with and it took about 25-30 minutes to spot anything remotely that looked like a Comet.

When I did finally spot something, the object that I saw was very slowly moving across the Sky horizontally and in the general area of where we thought the Comet ought to be.  It also had a very long but dark smoky tail but the head of it didn’t have any lights or a brightness to it.  We honestly didn’t (and still don’t) know what this object was – it definitely wasn’t an Airplane – it looked more like a meteor to me but who knows!!

At about 19:10 I decided to have one final look (it was absolutely freezing cold) and just had a general scan of the Sky underneath and around the Moon, and finally spotted it!  It was very faint and to the lower right of the Moon (not to the lower left as on previous nights) but it was unmistakeable.  You could see the head of the Comet being lit up by the Sun and the long tail reaching out behind it almost vertically.  We couldn’t see the twin tail unfortunately, but we were very glad that we finally saw it after nearly giving up!  It was a very exciting 10-15 minutes looking at it (whilst a Tawny Owl was calling in the nearby trees which did make it a bit creepy though!).

Here is an image from NASA that looks almost exactly the way we saw it, although it wasn’t quite as bright as this tonight.

Comet Pan-Starrs

Tomorrow is the last day of decent weather for the next few days, so we will be going out again to Shaugh Prior to have another look.  Am hoping we will get an even better view of it! 😉