Astroblog: Where is 73P now?

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Where is 73P now?

Click to enlarge. Looking north-east as seen form Adelaide at 11:00 pm ACST (most of Australia will have similar views at the smae local time). 73P has been causing excitement the world over form it's fragments hi-jinks. The two brightest fragents, C and B, are now potentialy visible in 10x50 binoculars (forget the magnitudes listed on the map, they are actually around mag 8.2), cloud permitting. Tonight might be a little toch and go, with the waning Moon rising when the comets are high enough to see, but the next few nights should be better. The comets are faily close to some bright stars, so should be easy to locate, start at bright orange Arcturus (the bright orange star in the map) and starhop down.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:35 am

Comments:

We have been looking for 73P B & C fragments in Bootes on a few occasions with no luck. Hopefully will et a chance to see it tonight. Mag 8.2 should be easily do-able from Central Park, NYC.
Thanks for the chart! peter

# posted by