Head's up for a comet around 1-29-2023 to 2-1-2023

[BF Hammer]

This one is forecast to brighten to just naked-eye visible around the last week of January 2023. During this time it will appear in the sky to the north, right in there with the Big and Little Dippers. It may take a long telephoto lens to photograph it well. It will be less than half as bright as Polaris in the sky.

Or it could just fizzle-out before then. Comets are fickle.

https://science.nasa.gov/comet-2022-e3-ztf

Stellarium on the Web
Advance the date to the 30th and look for where the comet is in the north sky.

 

[Bikerbrent]

Cross our fingers that the weather and comet will be good around the end of the month!

 

[Roy1961]

@Dawg Pics

 

[Dawg Pics]

@Roy1961 Thanks. I haven't been keeping up. I need to scope out a place to see if it is possible to get some shots of it.

Unfortunately, the moon will be high up in the sky that week.

 

[Dawg Pics]

FYI If you have too much light pollution and want to see the comet, there will be a virtual telescope available online.
There is a website and YouTube channel. The website has a lot of pop-ups.

The Virtual Telescope Project

 

[Fred Kingston]

FYI If you have too much light pollution and want to see the comet, there will be a virtual telescope available online.
There is a website and YouTube channel. The website has a lot of pop-ups.

The Virtual Telescope Project

So...for pictures, what do you do??? Screen shots???

 

[Dawg Pics]

So...for pictures, what do you do??? Screen shots???

Ha. Yep, that should do it.

 

[BF Hammer]

The current reports are that the comet is now visible through binoculars. There is coma and tail visible in photos done with telescopes. This comet should be just bright enough to try capturing with camera and lens for exposure stacking.

The video is a photographer's estimate for best nights and times to be photographing this.

 

[Dawg Pics]

For those who may not know, the above video is by Nikonite's "Moab Man, George Pandoff"

 

[BF Hammer]

I didn't know. George also made another video that I did not view yet about the technical stuff for the camera and using a star tracker. Mostly the stuff I learned from Neowise in 2020 I imagine.