new comet visible to all ????

blacktalons

UH astronomers discover a rare, new comet


Posted: Jun 17, 2011 6:17 AM Updated: Jun 17, 2011 7:20 AM



Evidence of Comet C2011L4 just down & right of center of the screen



Richard Wainscoat



The Panstarrs-1 telescope atop Haleakala



Henry Hsieh



Larry Denneau





MANOA (HawaiiNewsNow) - Astronomers at the University of Hawaii - Manoa spend their days searching the final frontier for any signs of movement. In their quest to find wayward asteroids that may be tumbling towards earth, they made a rare discovery this month that you'll likely be able to see for yourself.
To the untrained eye, a dot on a telescope image doesn't look like much. But you'll be catching a lot more of comet C2011L4 soon. "Everyone in the world should be able to see it, if it does what we hope it will do," says UH astronomer, Richard Wainscoat.
Wainscoat and his fellow UH astronomers made the unexpected and fascinating find in early June. The Panstarrs-1 telescope atop Haleakala caught the rare, new comet moving its way across space. "It's coming from very, very far out in the solar system, and it's going to come very close to the sun," says Wainscoat.
So close, that scientists anticipate we'll be able to see it with the naked eye sometime in March 2013 - making this comet standout from all the others. Usually, we can't see them without a telescope.
Comets are accumulations of ice, rock, and dirt, and because they're mostly frozen, they're considered preserved relics.
"We think of them as leftover bits from the formation of the solar system," says UH astronomer, Henry Hsieh. "So, they are very interesting to study because they can give us some information about where we came from."
Panstarrs-1 came on-line on Haleakala just over a year ago and is the most advanced survey telescope in the world. It was able to catch comet C2011L4 with its deluxe, digital camera - the largest in the world.
Astronomer Larry Denneau elaborates, "It's a camera that has 1.4 billion pixels per image. So that's like 500 or 1,000 I-phone images every single exposure." The camera takes about 500 total images each night.
Astronomers say they get one good comet like this every 10 years or so. They'll keep tracking it until spring 2013. "It's exciting to discover something that, perhaps, everyone in the world may see!" says Wainscoat.Astronomers caution that predicting the brightness of comets is, historically, very difficult - so there's no 100% guarantee that we'll be able to see it with our eyes alone. However, if it continues, as planned, we will be able to. And don't worry. They say the comet will pose no danger to earth when it makes its appearance.

Copyright 2011 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

emo72

thats great news. what was the last great comet we had in the early 90s? halle-bop or swift-tuttle springs to mind. cant remember but it lit up the night sky for months. hope this does the same.

Beeker

emo72 wrote: »

thats great news. what was the last great comet we had in the early 90s? halle-bop or swift-tuttle springs to mind. cant remember but it lit up the night sky for months. hope this does the same.

Hale-Bop, it was great to see every night in the sky! I must drag out some photos I took at the time and post.

djhaxman

Yeah hopefully it's as visible as Hale Bopp, stuff like this increases people's interest in astronomy and thats a good thing.

Cue the end of the world conspiracy theories though :-(

Captain Chaos

emo72 wrote: »

thats great news. what was the last great comet we had in the early 90s? halle-bop or swift-tuttle springs to mind. cant remember but it lit up the night sky for months. hope this does the same.

I never managed to see this in the 90s at all. I was very interested since the comet SL9 hit Jupiter but never managed to spot the few comets we had about in the 90s.

Lit up the night sky for months? I must be on a different planet or had constant cloud cover every night for those months. I have not seen the night sky in a few weeks with all this cloud now come to think of it. Can't remember last time I saw the moon either.

Beeker

djhaxman wrote: »

Cue the end of the world conspiracy theories though :-(

Just thinking the same thing. If I remember there were a bunch of idiots who killed themselves at the time of Hale Bopp, Heavens gate or something like that:(

Captain Chaos

djhaxman wrote: »

Cue the end of the world conspiracy theories though :-(

Yeah, when the world doesn't end in 2012 they will say this new comet visible in 2013 is the Plant X Death Star and someone forgot to carry the 1 somewhere. Poor morons.

Columbia

Very excited to hear this. It was only a month or two ago I was reading about comets wondering when the next one would be along, hopefully we'll get some good viewing nights.

derra

Beeker wrote: »

Just thinking the same thing. If I remember there were a bunch of idiots who killed themselves at the time of Hale Bopp, Heavens gate or something like that:(

Madness !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28religious_group%29

iPlop

derra wrote: »

Madness !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28religious_group%29

Yeah it's crazy, comet elenin is flying by in October and when I try to find out if it's going to be like Hale-bopp in magnitude so I can observe it, all I get online is conspiracy shíte, Hale bopp would have been classed as planet X back in 1997 if the net was a s good as it is now.

iPlop

Beeker wrote: »

Hale-Bop, it was great to see every night in the sky! I must drag out some photos I took at the time and post.

It was a fantastic sight beeker, even in dublin with all the light pollution, I remember it well.

emo72

Captain Chaos wrote: »

I never managed to see this in the 90s at all. I was very interested since the comet SL9 hit Jupiter but never managed to spot the few comets we had about in the 90s.

Lit up the night sky for months? I must be on a different planet or had constant cloud cover every night for those months. I have not seen the night sky in a few weeks with all this cloud now come to think of it. Can't remember last time I saw the moon either.

aye captain, it was definitely there. but you would need darkish skies to see it. city suburbs with orange street lights wouldnt help. but it was there for a good few months, no problem seeing it in lucan and then i was in america and saw it no problem.

its not small, you didnt need binos or scopes. it stretched a good way across the sky in a big fuzzy streak. SOMEONE POST A PIC:D

Captain Chaos

emo72 wrote: »

its not small, you didnt need binos or scopes. it stretched a good way across the sky in a big fuzzy streak. SOMEONE POST A PIC:D

I hope to see at least one of the great comets with my own eyes. Escape from the city is the answer. If I couldn't see that comet in 97 and with light pollution now I don't have a hope of spotting anything, that and the problem of global cloud cover getting worse every year with rising temperatures.

Bring on the clear crisp winter nights, I say.

Red Hand

emo72 wrote: »

aye captain, it was definitely there. but you would need darkish skies to see it. city suburbs with orange street lights wouldnt help. but it was there for a good few months, no problem seeing it in lucan and then i was in america and saw it no problem.

its not small, you didnt need binos or scopes. it stretched a good way across the sky in a big fuzzy streak. SOMEONE POST A PIC:D

"Ummmm, bop! Doo doo doom bop!"

http://www.posters.ws/images/334852/hanson.jpg

Here you go:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3464/3911010991_084ecafcb9.jpg

Beeker

Here are some I took in my back garden using nothing more than a standard SLR camera, Images are scanned in so sorry for lack of quality:o






It was a great sight every night and really sparked an interest in the general public. Lets hope this one can do the same:)

coylemj

Yup, Hale-Bopp could be seen from the main street in Dun Laoghaire with the naked eye, even with all the street lights. Hyakutake I recall did need binos.

Zubeneschamali

17P/Holmes was a naked eye object in October 07, near Perseus. It didn't have a big tail, though, it was just a blob.

I saw Halley's comet back in '86 with my bare eyes, too.

Popoutman

I vaguely remember being shown Halley when I was 9, as a faint blob. Nothing that got me that excited at the time, but I'm glad that I saw it.
Comet Austin (1990) was around as I finished primary school and I was starting to become more interested in astronomy in general. I did see Swift-Tuttle as well, in 1992
Hyukatake I remember seeing, and it was quite pretty.
Hale-Bopp was quite memorable even though I was in college and didn't have access to my scope or even to binoculars at the time, but I can remember seeing the comet in the north when I was coming home from long study sessions ( ).
I missed McNaught as I was recovering from an illnes and I just couldn't muster up the energy to go looking - as well as the weather being completely against me. I was annoyed I missed getting any glimpse of this one.
I've followed a few dim ones since then with the scope, and I watched Holmes brighten and dim as well. That was good!
I'm definitely looking forwards to the next bright one.

peterako

Hale-Bopp has a special place in my memory for a few reaons:

- It was very easily visible with the naked eye, tail(s) and all.
- It was visible every (clear) night for so long!
- It was the first thing my (then) band and I looked at from my front room before practice
- It coincided with the birth of my first child

Pity I did not have a camera capable of taking a picture of it (or rather I was not capable of taking a picture of it) at the time.

A friend's family bought a small telescope to observe Halley, but it was just a smudge.....

Hopefully we'll see the likes of Hale-Bopp again in my lifetime. Not too close but spectacular

This: is very close to how I remember seeing it in our skies.....(minus the pylon etc of course )

emo72

i thought Halleys last visit was only visible from the southern hemisphere?

Zubeneschamali

emo72 wrote: »

i thought Halleys last visit was only visible from the southern hemisphere?

Nope, naked-eye visible here in ireland, but not spectacular.

emo72

just checked wiki, it was hardly visible in the northern hemisphere in 86. you were lucky to see it.

Zubeneschamali

emo72 wrote: »

just checked wiki, it was hardly visible in the northern hemisphere in 86. you were lucky to see it.

Eh, no, Halley's comet didn't blaze across the sky or anything, but was clearly visible in a light-polluted Dublin suburb.

emo72

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Eh, no, Halley's comet didn't blaze across the sky or anything, but was clearly visible in a light-polluted Dublin suburb.

not disagreeing with you, i was into astronomy back then but for some reason the media were reporting it as not visible in the northern hemisphere. so i didnt look for it. im sad now that it was visible and i didnt look for it. i doubt if i'll see the next passing. took this from wiki:-

1986


Halley's Comet in 1986
Halley's 1986 apparition was the least favorable on record. The comet and the Earth were on opposite sides of the Sun in February 1986, creating the worst viewing circumstances for Earth observers for the last 2,000 years.[79] Additionally, with increased light pollution from urbanization, many people never saw the comet at all.[80] Further, the comet appeared brightest when it was almost invisible from the northern hemisphere in March and April

Jaffser

I remember Hale-Bopp. I was doing night security work behind the Red-Cow at the time and I remember being able to see it clearly (Clear Night withstanding) even though it was highly light polluted.

I have since received a 5" Skywatcher Alt-Az and I am looking forward to the next big one coming around.

Best,

Jaf

Ms. Perfect

Hale-Bopp was great. I kept pointing it out to all my friends