Astroblog: Comet 45P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova visible in the Southern Skies

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Comet 45P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova visible in the Southern Skies

Left image; location of comet 45P in the southern sky at 10:00 pm and right image, location of 45P in the southern skies at 5:00 am (click on images to embiggen into printable charts).

Comet Comet 45P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova is now bright enough to see in binoculars in the Southern Hemisphere skies. Unfortunately, it is also a time when the bright Full/almost Full moon is in the skies. It is best seen early in the morning, when the comet is at its highest, and the Moon is low on the horizon. Tonight (Saturday 13 August), it is close to lots of beautiful clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Unfortunately for Stellarium users, Stellarium gives the wrong position for 45P.

Map suitable for use with binoculars, to locate the comet tonight. The rectangle is the approximate field of view of GRAS-12, the circle is the approximate field of view of 10x50 binoculars. UPDATE: clouded out

Labels: binocular, comet, telescope

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 3:49 pm

Comments:

Most people reading this blog are novice at best. You are an expert - Why don't you post a photo of comet for all to see. Thank you in advance. LBG

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:52 am

"Your scheduled reservation time has been canceled on GRAS012 at 8/14/2011 5:25:38 AM due to the osbervatory roof being closed due to poor weather conditions."

That's why, blinking weather messing up my carefully laid astrophotography plans.

# posted by