Science

Rare Comet Visible In Atlanta’s Night Sky: How To See It

January 20th, 2015

There’s a recently-discovered comet in the night sky over Atlanta. It’s called Comet Lovejoy. In a place that gets dark enough to see the Milky Way, it could be visible with your eyes alone. Here in Atlanta, on a clear night, a pair of binoculars should do it.

“If you’ve never seen a comet before, this is a good time to try,” said April Whitt, an astronomer at Fernbank Science Center. “It’s pretty high up in the early evening sky. You don’t have to get up at one o’clock in the morning or anything.”

To see the comet, Whitt recommends finding Orion, then scanning to the right. Another approach, recommended by David Dundee, the astronomer at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, is to face south, then look straight up.

“It looks like kind of a round, fuzzy green snowball,” said Dundee.

Looking at something in your binoculars, but not sure if it’s the comet? There are a couple clues. The comet is fuzzy; a star is not. And if you check back later, the comet will have moved relative to the stars around it.

An amateur astronomer in Australia discovered Lovejoy last year. It’s named after him.

Comets come from the Oort Cloud, which surrounds our solar system, and is full of icy things, explained Dundee.

“Comets for most of their lives are extremely boring,” Dundee said. “They’re just dirty chunks of frozen gas and water and pebbles and sand.”

Comets start to get interesting, Dundee said, as they approach the sun, which pushes the gas away from the comet. That’s what gives it its tail. (The tail does not tell you which way the comet is coming from, it just points away from the sun.)

Lovejoy should be visible with binoculars for another couple weeks, then by telescope until April. If you miss it this time, tough luck. Lovejoy won’t be back for 8,000 years.

Fernbank’s observatory is open on Thursday and Friday nights as long as it’s a clear sky.
The Tellus Science Museum doesn’t have any viewing parties scheduled right now, but updates to the schedule will be on its website.
Georgia Tech’s observatory has a public viewing session on Jan. 29, and astronomers there may try to see the comet.